English homophones
Delhi/deli
"Delhi" is a name; "deli" 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: "Delhi" arrives as a name, while "deli" is a noun. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "del" then splits - "Delhi" (5 letters) vs "deli" (4).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across Delhi, deli: deil. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
Delhi
5 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVCCV
Inventory dehil · private h
deli
4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVCV
Inventory deil · no private letters vs siblings
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "Delhi" when you mean: A megacity and union territory of India, containing the national capital New Delhi.
- Write "deli" when you mean: A shop that sells cooked or prepared food ready for serving.
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 (Delhi, deli). Here's where to go from here.
- "Delhi" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #4,365 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: Derek · derrick. 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.