English homophones
blond/blonde
"blond" is an adjective; "blonde" 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: "blond" arrives as an adjective, while "blonde" is a noun. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "blond" then splits - "blond" (5 letters) vs "blonde" (6).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across blond, blonde: bdlno. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
blond
5 letters · 1 vowels · shape CCVCC
Inventory bdlno · no private letters vs siblings
blonde
6 letters · 2 vowels · shape CCVCCV
Inventory bdelno · private e
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "blond" when you mean: Of a bleached or pale golden (light yellowish) colour.
- Write "blonde" when you mean: Alternative form of blond (“person with fair hair”). (Used especially of a woman. See the usage notes in the entry blond.)
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 (blond, blonde). Here's where to go from here.
- "blonde" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #6,657 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: bead · bede. 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.