English homophones

curt/Kurt

"curt" is an adjective; "Kurt" is a name - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.

Data vintage 2026-09-03

Grammar picks the spelling

Same sound, different grammar: "curt" arrives as an adjective, while "Kurt" is a name. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.

No shared spelling stem: "curt" is 4 letters, "Kurt" is 4; only the sound ties them.

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

Write "curt" when you mean: Brief or terse, especially to the point of being rude.
Write "Kurt" when you mean: A male given name from the Germanic languages borrowed from German, a contracted form of Konrad.

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

adjective · /kɝt/ · #23,505 frequency

Brief or terse, especially to the point of being rude.

name · /kɝt/ · #8,566 frequency

A male given name from the Germanic languages borrowed from German, a contracted form of Konrad.

What to do next

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

"Kurt" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #8,566 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: countrymen · countryman. 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.