English homophones

cede/seed

"cede" is a verb; "seed" is a noun - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.

Data vintage 2026-09-03

Grammar picks the spelling

Same sound, different grammar: "cede" arrives as a verb, while "seed" is a noun. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.

No shared spelling stem: "cede" is 4 letters, "seed" is 4; only the sound ties them.

Shared letters across cede, seed: de. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.

Write "cede" when you mean: To give up; yield to another.
Write "seed" when you mean: Any propagative portion of a plant which may be sown, such as true seeds, seed-like fruits, tubers, or bulbs.

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

verb · /siːd/ · #34,425 frequency

To give up; yield to another.

noun · /siːd/ · #3,846 frequency

Any propagative portion of a plant which may be sown, such as true seeds, seed-like fruits, tubers, or bulbs.

What to do next

You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (cede, seed). Here's where to go from here.

"seed" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #3,846 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: cox · cocks. 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.