English homophones
bask/Basque
"bask" is a verb; "Basque" is a noun - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Grammar picks the spelling
Same sound, different grammar: "bask" arrives as a verb, while "Basque" is a noun. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "bas" then splits - "bask" (4 letters) vs "Basque" (6).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across bask, Basque: abs. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
bask
4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVCC
Inventory abks · private k
Basque
6 letters · 3 vowels · shape CVCCVV
Inventory abeqsu · private equ
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "bask" when you mean: To bathe in warmth; to be exposed to pleasant heat.
- Write "Basque" when you mean: A member of a cultural and ethnic people living in the western Pyrenees and the Bay of Biscay between France and Spain.
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 (bask, Basque). Here's where to go from here.
- "Basque" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #22,898 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: bark · bok. 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.