English homophones
doe/dough
"dough" (#8,783 written frequency) beats "doe" (#9,035) in this 2-word /dəʊ/ cluster. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Frequency splits the cluster
These 2 spellings keep the same /dəʊ/ reading, but written frequency splits them hard: "dough" leads at #8,783, with "doe" trailing at #9,035.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "do" then splits - "doe" (3 letters) vs "dough" (5).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across doe, dough: do. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
doe
3 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVV
Inventory deo · private e
dough
5 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVVCC
Inventory dghou · private ghu
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "doe" when you mean: A female deer; also used of similar animals such as antelope (less commonly a goat, as nanny is also used).
- Write "dough" when you mean: A thick, malleable substance made by mixing flour with other ingredients such as water, eggs, or butter, that is made into a particular f…
Known mistypes of these spellings
Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.
- dough ← ddough · doguh · douggh · doughh · douhg · duogh
Each spelling
noun · /dəʊ/ · #9,035 frequency
A female deer; also used of similar animals such as antelope (less commonly a goat, as nanny is also used).
noun · /dəʊ/ · #8,783 frequency
A thick, malleable substance made by mixing flour with other ingredients such as water, eggs, or butter, that is made into a particular form and then baked.
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (doe, dough). Here's where to go from here.
- "dough" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #8,783 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: dung · Deng. Nearby cluster
- Each spelling in "doe, dough" 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.