English homophones
bark/bok
"bark" is a verb; "bok" is an adjective - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Grammar picks the spelling
Same sound, different grammar: "bark" arrives as a verb, while "bok" is an adjective. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- No shared spelling stem: "bark" is 4 letters, "bok" is 3; only the sound ties them.
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across bark, bok: bk. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
bark
4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVCC
Inventory abkr · private ar
bok
3 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVC
Inventory bko · private o
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "bark" when you mean: To make a short, loud, explosive noise with the vocal organs (said of animals, especially dogs).
- Write "bok" when you mean: Keen or willing.
Known mistypes of these spellings
Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.
- bark ← abrk · bakr · barkk · barrk · bbark · brak
Each spelling
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (bark, bok). Here's where to go from here.
- "bark" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #8,895 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: brooch · broach. 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.