English homophones
drew/Dru
"drew" is a verb; "Dru" is a name - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Grammar picks the spelling
Same sound, different grammar: "drew" arrives as a verb, while "Dru" is a name. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "dr" then splits - "drew" (4 letters) vs "Dru" (3).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across drew, Dru: dr. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
drew
4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CCVC
Inventory derw · private ew
Dru
3 letters · 1 vowels · shape CCV
Inventory dru · private u
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "drew" when you mean: simple past of draw
- Write "Dru" when you mean: A diminutive of the male given name Andrew, also used as a formal given name.
Known mistypes of these spellings
Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.
- drew ← ddrew · derw · dreww · drrew · drwe · rdew
Each spelling
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (drew, Dru). Here's where to go from here.
- "drew" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #3,226 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: der · duh. 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.