English homophones
fem/femme
"femme" (#22,671 written frequency) beats "fem" (#33,233) in this 2-word /fɛm/ cluster. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Frequency splits the cluster
These 2 spellings keep the same /fɛm/ reading, but written frequency splits them hard: "femme" leads at #22,671, with "fem" trailing at #33,233.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "fem" then splits - "fem" (3 letters) vs "femme" (5).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across fem, femme: efm. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
fem
3 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVC
Inventory efm · no private letters vs siblings
femme
5 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVCCV
Inventory efm · no private letters vs siblings
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "fem" when you mean: Synonym of femme.
- Write "femme" when you mean: A woman, a wife; (now chiefly Canada, US) a young woman or girl.
Known mistypes of these spellings
Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.
- femme ← efmme · feme · femem · ffemme · fmeme
Each spelling
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (fem, femme). Here's where to go from here.
- "femme" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #22,671 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: fueled · fuelled. Nearby cluster
- Each spelling in "fem, femme" 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.