English homophones
caught/court
"caught" is an adjective; "court" 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: "caught" arrives as an adjective, while "court" is a noun. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- No shared spelling stem: "caught" is 6 letters, "court" is 5; only the sound ties them.
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across caught, court: ctu. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
caught
6 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVVCCC
Inventory acghtu · private agh
court
5 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVVCC
Inventory cortu · private or
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "caught" when you mean: Of the method of being out in which the striker hits the ball and a fielder catches it.
- Write "court" when you mean: An enclosed space; a courtyard; an uncovered area shut in by the walls of a building, or by different buildings; also, a space opening fr…
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
adjective · /kɔːt/ · #1,326 frequency
Of the method of being out in which the striker hits the ball and a fielder catches it.
noun · /kɔːt/ · #370 frequency
An enclosed space; a courtyard; an uncovered area shut in by the walls of a building, or by different buildings; also, a space opening from a street and nearly surrounded by houses; a blind alley.
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (caught, court). Here's where to go from here.
- "court" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #370 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: clause · claws. 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.