English homophones

bein/bene

"bein" is an adjective; "bene" 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: "bein" arrives as an adjective, while "bene" is a noun. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.

Spelling pairs in this cluster

  • Shared stem "be" then splits - "bein" (4 letters) vs "bene" (4).

Orthographic DNA of this cluster

Shared letters across bein, bene: ben. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.

  • bein

    4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVVC

    Inventory bein · private i

  • bene

    4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVCV

    Inventory ben · no private letters vs siblings

Pick the spelling from the meaning

  • Write "bein" when you mean: Wealthy; well-to-do.
  • Write "bene" when you mean: A prayer, especially to God; a petition; a boon.

Known mistypes of these spellings

Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.

  • beinbbein · beinn · beni · bien · ebin
  • benebbene · benne · bnee · ebne

Each spelling

bein

adjective · /biːn/ · #22,298 frequency

Wealthy; well-to-do.

bene

noun · /biːn/ · #32,695 frequency

A prayer, especially to God; a petition; a boon.

Nearby English homophone groups

What to do next

You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (bein, bene). Here's where to go from here.

  • "bein" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #22,298 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.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list