English homophones
bees/bes
"bees" is a noun; "bes" 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: "bees" arrives as a noun, while "bes" is a verb. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "be" then splits - "bees" (4 letters) vs "bes" (3).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across bees, bes: bes. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
bees
4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVVC
Inventory bes · no private letters vs siblings
bes
3 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVC
Inventory bes · no private letters vs siblings
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "bees" when you mean: plural of bee
- Write "bes" when you mean: third-person singular simple present indicative of be
Known mistypes of these spellings
Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.
- bees ← bbees · beess · bese · ebes
Each spelling
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (bees, bes). Here's where to go from here.
- "bees" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #7,529 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: bear · bare. 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.