English homophones
cast/caste
"cast" is a verb; "caste" 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: "cast" arrives as a verb, while "caste" is a noun. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "cast" then splits - "cast" (4 letters) vs "caste" (5).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across cast, caste: acst. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
cast
4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVCC
Inventory acst · no private letters vs siblings
caste
5 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVCCV
Inventory acest · private e
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "cast" when you mean: To move, or be moved, away.
- Write "caste" when you mean: Any of the hereditary social classes and subclasses of South Asian societies or similar found historically in other cultures.
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 (cast, caste). Here's where to go from here.
- "cast" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #1,686 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: Christmas · Xmas. 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.