English homophones
Doug/dug
"Doug" is a name; "dug" 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: "Doug" arrives as a name, while "dug" is a verb. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- No shared spelling stem: "Doug" is 4 letters, "dug" is 3; only the sound ties them.
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across Doug, dug: dgu. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
Doug
4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVVC
Inventory dgou · private o
dug
3 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVC
Inventory dgu · no private letters vs siblings
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "Doug" when you mean: A diminutive of the male given name Douglas.
- Write "dug" when you mean: simple past and past participle of dig (replacing earlier digged)
Known mistypes of these spellings
Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.
- Doug ← ddoug · dogu · dougg · duog · odug
Each spelling
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (Doug, dug). Here's where to go from here.
- "Doug" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #6,896 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: defense · defence. 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.