English homophones
dew/Jew/Ju
"dew" is a noun; "Ju" is a name - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #30 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Grammar picks the spelling
Same sound, different grammar: "dew" arrives as a noun, while "Ju" is a name. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- No shared spelling stem: "dew" is 3 letters, "Jew" is 3; only the sound ties them.
- No shared spelling stem: "dew" is 3 letters, "Ju" is 2; only the sound ties them.
- No shared spelling stem: "Jew" is 3 letters, "Ju" is 2; only the sound ties them.
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across dew, Jew, Ju: none. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
dew
3 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVC
Inventory dew · private dew
Jew
3 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVC
Inventory ejw · private ejw
Ju
2 letters · 1 vowels · shape CV
Inventory ju · private ju
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "dew" when you mean: Any moisture from the atmosphere condensed by cool bodies upon their surfaces.
- Write "Jew" when you mean: An adherent of Judaism.
- Write "Ju" when you mean: A surname from Chinese.
Each spelling
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 3-spelling cluster (dew, Jew, Ju). Here's where to go from here.
- "Jew" is the most frequent headword in this 3-spelling cluster (rank #8,683 in English). Full entry
- Among English homophone groups, a cluster of 3 spellings ranks #30 by size (1,007 groups in this vintage). Corpus statistics
- Explore a nearby 3-spelling cluster: daily · Daly · Daley. 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.