English homophones
cells/sells
"cells" is a noun; "sells" is a verb - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Grammar picks the spelling
Same sound, different grammar: "cells" arrives as a noun, while "sells" is a verb. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- No shared spelling stem: "cells" is 5 letters, "sells" is 5; only the sound ties them.
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across cells, sells: els. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
cells
5 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVCCC
Inventory cels · private c
sells
5 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVCCC
Inventory els · no private letters vs siblings
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "cells" when you mean: plural of cell
- Write "sells" when you mean: third-person singular simple present indicative of sell
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 (cells, sells). Here's where to go from here.
- "cells" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #1,814 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: coy · koi. 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.