English homophones
chou/shoe/shoo
"chou" is a noun; "shoo" is a verb - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #30 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Grammar picks the spelling
Same sound, different grammar: "chou" arrives as a noun, while "shoo" is a verb. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- No shared spelling stem: "chou" is 4 letters, "shoe" is 4; only the sound ties them.
- No shared spelling stem: "chou" is 4 letters, "shoo" is 4; only the sound ties them.
- Single-letter fork: "shoe" keeps e, "shoo" writes o at letter 4.
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across chou, shoe, shoo: ho. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
chou
4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CCVV
Inventory chou · private cu
shoe
4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CCVV
Inventory ehos · private es
shoo
4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CCVV
Inventory hos · private s
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "chou" when you mean: Choux pastry, usually in the form of a small round cake with a sweet filling.
- Write "shoe" when you mean: A protective covering for the foot, with a bottom part composed of thick leather or plastic sole and often a thicker heel, and a softer u…
- Write "shoo" when you mean: To induce someone or something to leave.
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
noun · /ʃuː/ · #29,595 frequency
Choux pastry, usually in the form of a small round cake with a sweet filling.
noun · /ˈʃuː/ · #4,796 frequency
A protective covering for the foot, with a bottom part composed of thick leather or plastic sole and often a thicker heel, and a softer upper part made of leather or synthetic material. Shoes generally do not extend above the ankle, as opposed to boots, which do.
Nearby English homophone groups
- citing · sighting · siting3-spelling cluster
- crew · Crewe · cru3-spelling cluster
- checks · cheques · Czechs3-spelling cluster
- chow · Chao · ciao3-spelling cluster
- sent · cent · scent3-spelling cluster
- check · Czech · cheque3-spelling cluster
- cruise · Cruz · crews3-spelling cluster
- car · ka · carr3-spelling cluster
What to do next
You've reviewed the 3-spelling cluster (chou, shoe, shoo). Here's where to go from here.
- "shoe" is the most frequent headword in this 3-spelling cluster (rank #4,796 in English). Full entry
- Among English homophone groups, a cluster of 3 spellings ranks #30 by size (1,007 groups in this vintage). Corpus statistics
- Explore a nearby 3-spelling cluster: citing · sighting · siting. 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.