English homophones
but/butt
"but" is a preposition; "butt" 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: "but" arrives as a preposition, while "butt" is a noun. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "but" then splits - "but" (3 letters) vs "butt" (4).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across but, butt: btu. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
but
3 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVC
Inventory btu · no private letters vs siblings
butt
4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVCC
Inventory btu · no private letters vs siblings
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "but" when you mean: Apart from, except (for), excluding.
- Write "butt" when you mean: The larger or thicker end of something; the blunt end, in distinction from the sharp or narrow end
Known mistypes of these spellings
Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.
- butt ← bbutt · btut · ubtt
Each spelling
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (but, butt). Here's where to go from here.
- "but" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #25 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: bane · bain. 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.