English homophones

car/carr/ka

"car" (#334 written frequency) beats "ka" (#9,201) in this 3-word /kɑː/ cluster. Size rank #30 of 1,007 English groups.

Data vintage

Frequency splits the cluster

These 3 spellings keep the same /kɑː/ reading, but written frequency splits them hard: "car" leads at #334, with "ka" trailing at #9,201.

Spelling pairs in this cluster

  • Shared stem "car" then splits - "car" (3 letters) vs "carr" (4).
  • No shared spelling stem: "car" is 3 letters, "ka" is 2; only the sound ties them.
  • No shared spelling stem: "carr" is 4 letters, "ka" is 2; only the sound ties them.

Orthographic DNA of this cluster

Shared letters across car, carr, ka: a. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.

  • car

    3 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVC

    Inventory acr · private cr

  • carr

    4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVCC

    Inventory acr · private cr

  • ka

    2 letters · 1 vowels · shape CV

    Inventory ak · private k

Pick the spelling from the meaning

  • Write "car" when you mean: A wheeled vehicle that moves independently, with at least three wheels, powered mechanically, steered by a driver and mostly for personal…
  • Write "carr" when you mean: Any marsh; marshy ground, swampland.
  • Write "ka" when you mean: A spiritual part of the soul in Egyptian mythology, which survived after death.

Known mistypes of these spellings

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

  • carracrr · ccarr · crar

Each spelling

car

noun · /kɑː/ · #334 frequency

A wheeled vehicle that moves independently, with at least three wheels, powered mechanically, steered by a driver and mostly for personal transportation but relatively smaller than a truck/lorry and a bus.

carr

noun · /kɑː/ · #11,178 frequency

Any marsh; marshy ground, swampland.

ka

noun · /kɑː/ · #9,201 frequency

A spiritual part of the soul in Egyptian mythology, which survived after death.

Nearby English homophone groups

What to do next

You've reviewed the 3-spelling cluster (car, carr, ka). Here's where to go from here.

  • "car" is the most frequent headword in this 3-spelling cluster (rank #334 in English). Full entry
  • Among English homophone groups, a cluster of 3 spellings ranks #30 by size (1,007 groups in this vintage). Corpus statistics
  • Explore a nearby 3-spelling cluster: shoe · chou · shoo. Nearby cluster
  • Each spelling in "car, carr, ka" has its own headword page with definition, IPA, and misspelling variants. First entry

PlainSpell is a reference corpus, not spelling advice. Verify unusual forms in context.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list