English homophones
aye/eh/IJ
"aye" is an adverb; "eh" is an intj - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #30 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Grammar picks the spelling
Same sound, different grammar: "aye" arrives as an adverb, while "eh" is an intj. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- No shared spelling stem: "aye" is 3 letters, "eh" is 2; only the sound ties them.
- No shared spelling stem: "aye" is 3 letters, "IJ" is 2; only the sound ties them.
- No shared spelling stem: "eh" is 2 letters, "IJ" is 2; only the sound ties them.
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across aye, eh, IJ: none. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
aye
3 letters · 3 vowels · shape VVV
Inventory aey · private aey
eh
2 letters · 1 vowels · shape VC
Inventory eh · private eh
IJ
2 letters · 1 vowels · shape VC
Inventory ij · private ij
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "aye" when you mean: Ever, always.
- Write "eh" when you mean: Used as a tag question, to emphasise what goes before or to request that the listener express an opinion about what has been said.
- Write "IJ" when you mean: A lake (formerly a bay) adjoining the city of Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Each spelling
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 3-spelling cluster (aye, eh, IJ). Here's where to go from here.
- "eh" is the most frequent headword in this 3-spelling cluster (rank #4,595 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: l · el · ell. 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.