English homophones
board/bored
"board" is a noun; "bored" 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: "board" arrives as a noun, while "bored" is a verb. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "bo" then splits - "board" (5 letters) vs "bored" (5).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across board, bored: bdor. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
board
5 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVVCC
Inventory abdor · private a
bored
5 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVCVC
Inventory bdeor · private e
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "board" when you mean: A relatively long, wide and thin piece of any material, usually wood or similar, often for use in construction or furniture-making.
- Write "bored" when you mean: simple past and past participle of bore
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 (board, bored). Here's where to go from here.
- "board" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #567 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: butte · beaut. 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.