English homophones

hall/haul

"hall" is a noun; "haul" 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: "hall" arrives as a noun, while "haul" is a verb. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.

Spelling pairs in this cluster

  • Shared stem "ha" then splits - "hall" (4 letters) vs "haul" (4).

Orthographic DNA of this cluster

Shared letters across hall, haul: ahl. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.

  • hall

    4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVCC

    Inventory ahl · no private letters vs siblings

  • haul

    4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVVC

    Inventory ahlu · private u

Pick the spelling from the meaning

  • Write "hall" when you mean: A corridor; a hallway.
  • Write "haul" when you mean: To transport by drawing or pulling, as with horses or oxen, or a motor vehicle.

Known mistypes of these spellings

Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.

  • hallahll · hhall · hlal
  • haulahul · halu · haull · hhaul · hual

Each spelling

hall

noun · /hɔːl/ · #1,427 frequency

A corridor; a hallway.

haul

verb · /hɔːl/ · #8,551 frequency

To transport by drawing or pulling, as with horses or oxen, or a motor vehicle.

Nearby English homophone groups

What to do next

You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (hall, haul). Here's where to go from here.

  • "hall" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #1,427 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: hurst · Hearst. 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.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list