English homophones

died/dyed

"died" (#632 written frequency) beats "dyed" (#16,459) in this 2-word /daɪd/ cluster. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.

Data vintage

Frequency splits the cluster

These 2 spellings keep the same /daɪd/ reading, but written frequency splits them hard: "died" leads at #632, with "dyed" trailing at #16,459.

Spelling pairs in this cluster

  • No shared spelling stem: "died" is 4 letters, "dyed" is 4; only the sound ties them.

Orthographic DNA of this cluster

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

  • died

    4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVVC

    Inventory dei · private i

  • dyed

    4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVVC

    Inventory dey · private y

Pick the spelling from the meaning

  • Write "died" when you mean: simple past and past participle of die
  • Write "dyed" when you mean: simple past and past participle of dye

Known mistypes of these spellings

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

  • diedddied · deid · dide · diedd · ided
  • dyedddyed · deyd · dyde · dyedd · dyyed · yded

Each spelling

died

verb · /daɪd/ · #632 frequency

simple past and past participle of die

dyed

verb · /daɪd/ · #16,459 frequency

simple past and past participle of dye

Nearby English homophone groups

What to do next

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

  • "died" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #632 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: descent · dissent. Nearby cluster
  • Each spelling in "died, dyed" has its own headword page with definition, IPA, and misspelling variants. First entry

PlainSpell is a reference corpus, not spelling advice. Verify unusual forms in context.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list