English homophones
coos/coups
"coos" is a verb; "coups" 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: "coos" arrives as a verb, while "coups" is a noun. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "co" then splits - "coos" (4 letters) vs "coups" (5).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across coos, coups: cos. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
coos
4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVVC
Inventory cos · no private letters vs siblings
coups
5 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVVCC
Inventory copsu · private pu
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "coos" when you mean: third-person singular simple present indicative of coo
- Write "coups" when you mean: plural of coup
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 (coos, coups). Here's where to go from here.
- "coups" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #33,995 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: Keynes · canes. 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.