English homophones
greaves/grieves
"greaves" (#37,006 written frequency) beats "grieves" (#48,784) in this 2-word /ɡɹivz/ cluster. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Frequency splits the cluster
These 2 spellings keep the same /ɡɹivz/ reading, but written frequency splits them hard: "greaves" leads at #37,006, with "grieves" trailing at #48,784.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "gr" then splits - "greaves" (7 letters) vs "grieves" (7).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across greaves, grieves: egrsv. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
greaves
7 letters · 3 vowels · shape CCVVCVC
Inventory aegrsv · private a
grieves
7 letters · 3 vowels · shape CCVVCVC
Inventory egirsv · private i
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "greaves" when you mean: The unmeltable residue left after animal fat has been rendered.
- Write "grieves" when you mean: plural of grief
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 (greaves, grieves). Here's where to go from here.
- "greaves" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #37,006 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: Greg · Gregg. Nearby cluster
- Each spelling in "greaves, grieves" 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.