English homophones

berry/bury

"berry" is a noun; "bury" is a verb - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.

Data vintage 2026-09-03

Grammar picks the spelling

Same sound, different grammar: "berry" arrives as a noun, while "bury" is a verb. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.

No shared spelling stem: "berry" is 5 letters, "bury" is 4; only the sound ties them.

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

Write "berry" when you mean: A small succulent fruit, of any one of many varieties.
Write "bury" when you mean: To ritualistically inter in a grave or tomb.

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

noun · /ˈbɛɹi/ · #7,419 frequency

A small succulent fruit, of any one of many varieties.

verb · /ˈbɛɹ.i/ · #8,396 frequency

To ritualistically inter in a grave or tomb.

What to do next

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

"berry" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #7,419 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.