English homophones
been/bin
"been" is a verb; "bin" 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: "been" arrives as a verb, while "bin" is a noun. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- No shared spelling stem: "been" is 4 letters, "bin" is 3; only the sound ties them.
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across been, bin: bn. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
been
4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVVC
Inventory ben · private e
bin
3 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVC
Inventory bin · private i
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "been" when you mean: past participle of be.
- Write "bin" when you mean: A box, frame, crib, or enclosed place, used as a storage container.
Known mistypes of these spellings
Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.
- been ← bbeen · beenn
Each spelling
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (been, bin). Here's where to go from here.
- "been" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #62 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: bruise · brews. 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.