English homophones
flea/flee
"flea" is a noun; "flee" is a verb - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Grammar picks the spelling
Same sound, different grammar: "flea" arrives as a noun, while "flee" is a verb. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Single-letter fork: "flea" keeps a, "flee" writes e at letter 4.
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across flea, flee: efl. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
flea
4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CCVV
Inventory aefl · private a
flee
4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CCVV
Inventory efl · no private letters vs siblings
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "flea" when you mean: A small, wingless, parasitic insect of the order Siphonaptera, renowned for its bloodsucking habits and jumping abilities.
- Write "flee" when you mean: To run away; to escape.
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 (flea, flee). Here's where to go from here.
- "flee" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #9,469 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: favorite · favourite. 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.