English homophones
coy/koi
"coy" is an adjective; "koi" 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: "coy" arrives as an adjective, while "koi" is a noun. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- No shared spelling stem: "coy" is 3 letters, "koi" is 3; only the sound ties them.
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across coy, koi: o. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
coy
3 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVV
Inventory coy · private cy
koi
3 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVV
Inventory iko · private ik
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "coy" when you mean: Bashful, shy, retiring.
- Write "koi" when you mean: Ornamental domesticated varieties of the Amur carp (Cyprinus rubrofuscus), of Japan and eastern Asia with red-gold or white coloring.
Each spelling
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (coy, koi). Here's where to go from here.
- "coy" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #25,336 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: Christian · Cristian. 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.