English homophones
band/banned
"band" is a noun; "banned" is a verb - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Grammar picks the spelling
Same sound, different grammar: "band" arrives as a noun, while "banned" is a verb. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "ban" then splits - "band" (4 letters) vs "banned" (6).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across band, banned: abdn. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
band
4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVCC
Inventory abdn · no private letters vs siblings
banned
6 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVCCVC
Inventory abden · private e
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "band" when you mean: A strip of material used for strengthening or coupling.
- Write "banned" when you mean: simple past and past participle of ban
Known mistypes of these spellings
Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.
Each spelling
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (band, banned). Here's where to go from here.
- "band" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #1,262 in English). Full entry
- Among English homophone groups, a cluster of 2 spellings ranks #133 by size (1,007 groups in this vintage). Corpus statistics
- Explore a nearby 2-spelling cluster: bore · boar. Nearby cluster
- Grammar often disambiguates this cluster, match the meaning to the part of speech before picking a spelling. Pick by meaning
PlainSpell is a reference corpus, not spelling advice. Verify unusual forms in context.