English homophones
faze/phase
"faze" is a verb; "phase" is a noun - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Grammar picks the spelling
Same sound, different grammar: "faze" arrives as a verb, while "phase" is a noun. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- No shared spelling stem: "faze" is 4 letters, "phase" is 5; only the sound ties them.
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across faze, phase: ae. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
faze
4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVCV
Inventory aefz · private fz
phase
5 letters · 2 vowels · shape CCVCV
Inventory aehps · private hps
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "faze" when you mean: To frighten or cause hesitation; to daunt, put off (usually used in the negative); to disconcert, to perturb.
- Write "phase" when you mean: A distinguishable part of a sequence or cycle occurring over time.
Known mistypes of these spellings
Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.
Each spelling
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (faze, phase). Here's where to go from here.
- "phase" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #2,306 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: fleas · flees. 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.