English homophones

chews/choose

"chews" is a noun; "choose" 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: "chews" arrives as a noun, while "choose" is a verb. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.

Spelling pairs in this cluster

  • Shared stem "ch" then splits - "chews" (5 letters) vs "choose" (6).

Orthographic DNA of this cluster

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

  • chews

    5 letters · 1 vowels · shape CCVCC

    Inventory cehsw · private w

  • choose

    6 letters · 3 vowels · shape CCVVCV

    Inventory cehos · private o

Pick the spelling from the meaning

  • Write "chews" when you mean: plural of chew
  • Write "choose" when you mean: To pick; to make the choice of; to select.

Known mistypes of these spellings

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

  • chewscchews · cehws · chesw · chewss · chewws · chhews
  • choosecchoose · chhoose · chooes · choosse · chosoe · cohose

Each spelling

chews

noun · /t͡ʃuːz/ · #37,850 frequency

plural of chew

choose

verb · /t͡ʃuːz/ · #1,296 frequency

To pick; to make the choice of; to select.

Nearby English homophone groups

What to do next

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

  • "choose" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #1,296 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: cause · cores. 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.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list