English homophones
flew/flu/flue
"flew" is a verb; "flu" is a noun - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #30 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Grammar picks the spelling
Same sound, different grammar: "flew" arrives as a verb, while "flu" is a noun. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "fl" then splits - "flew" (4 letters) vs "flu" (3).
- Shared stem "fl" then splits - "flew" (4 letters) vs "flue" (4).
- Shared stem "flu" then splits - "flu" (3 letters) vs "flue" (4).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across flew, flu, flue: fl. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
flew
4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CCVC
Inventory eflw · private ew
flu
3 letters · 1 vowels · shape CCV
Inventory flu · private u
flue
4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CCVV
Inventory eflu · private eu
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "flew" when you mean: simple past of fly
- Write "flu" when you mean: Influenza.
- Write "flue" when you mean: A pipe or duct that carries gaseous combustion products away from the point of combustion (such as a furnace).
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 3-spelling cluster (flew, flu, flue). Here's where to go from here.
- "flew" is the most frequent headword in this 3-spelling cluster (rank #5,497 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: few · phew · feu. 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.