English homophones
flack/flak
"flack" is a verb; "flak" 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: "flack" arrives as a verb, while "flak" is a noun. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "fla" then splits - "flack" (5 letters) vs "flak" (4).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across flack, flak: afkl. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
flack
5 letters · 1 vowels · shape CCVCC
Inventory acfkl · private c
flak
4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CCVC
Inventory afkl · no private letters vs siblings
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "flack" when you mean: To flutter; palpitate.
- Write "flak" when you mean: Ground-based anti-aircraft guns firing explosive shells.
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 (flack, flak). Here's where to go from here.
- "flak" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #26,792 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: forex · XXXX. 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.