English homophones
dam/damn
"dam" is a noun; "damn" 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: "dam" arrives as a noun, while "damn" is a verb. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "dam" then splits - "dam" (3 letters) vs "damn" (4).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across dam, damn: adm. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
dam
3 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVC
Inventory adm · no private letters vs siblings
damn
4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVCC
Inventory admn · private n
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "dam" when you mean: A structure placed across a flowing body of water to stop the flow or part of the flow, generally for purposes such as retaining or diver…
- Write "damn" when you mean: To condemn.
Known mistypes of these spellings
Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.
- damn ← admn · dammn · damnn · danm · ddamn · dman
Each spelling
noun · /dæm/ · #5,410 frequency
A structure placed across a flowing body of water to stop the flow or part of the flow, generally for purposes such as retaining or diverting some of the water or retarding the release of accumulated water to avoid abrupt flooding.
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (dam, damn). Here's where to go from here.
- "damn" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #845 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: demon · daemon. 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.