English homophones
heals/heels
"heals" is a verb; "heels" is a noun - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Grammar picks the spelling
Same sound, different grammar: "heals" arrives as a verb, while "heels" is a noun. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "he" then splits - "heals" (5 letters) vs "heels" (5).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across heals, heels: ehls. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
heals
5 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVVCC
Inventory aehls · private a
heels
5 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVVCC
Inventory ehls · no private letters vs siblings
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "heals" when you mean: third-person singular simple present indicative of heal
- Write "heels" when you mean: plural of heel
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 (heals, heels). Here's where to go from here.
- "heels" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #6,478 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: how's · hows. 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.