English homophones
brook/Brooke
"brook" is a verb; "Brooke" is a name - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Grammar picks the spelling
Same sound, different grammar: "brook" arrives as a verb, while "Brooke" is a name. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "brook" then splits - "brook" (5 letters) vs "Brooke" (6).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across brook, Brooke: bkor. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
brook
5 letters · 2 vowels · shape CCVVC
Inventory bkor · no private letters vs siblings
Brooke
6 letters · 3 vowels · shape CCVVCV
Inventory bekor · private e
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "brook" when you mean: To bear; endure; support; put up with; tolerate.
- Write "Brooke" when you mean: A surname from Middle English.
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 (brook, Brooke). Here's where to go from here.
- "Brooke" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #10,171 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: bold · bowled. 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.