English homophones
franc/frank
"franc" is a noun; "frank" is an adjective - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Grammar picks the spelling
Same sound, different grammar: "franc" arrives as a noun, while "frank" is an adjective. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Single-letter fork: "franc" keeps c, "frank" writes k at letter 5.
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across franc, frank: afnr. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
franc
5 letters · 1 vowels · shape CCVCC
Inventory acfnr · private c
frank
5 letters · 1 vowels · shape CCVCC
Inventory afknr · private k
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "franc" when you mean: Any of several units of currency.
- Write "frank" when you mean: Honest, especially in a manner that seems slightly blunt; candid; not reserved or disguised.
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 (franc, frank). Here's where to go from here.
- "frank" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #1,828 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: flow · Flo. 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.