English homophones
hew/hue/Hugh
"hew" is a verb; "hue" 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: "hew" arrives as a verb, while "hue" is a noun. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- No shared spelling stem: "hew" is 3 letters, "hue" is 3; only the sound ties them.
- No shared spelling stem: "hew" is 3 letters, "Hugh" is 4; only the sound ties them.
- Shared stem "hu" then splits - "hue" (3 letters) vs "Hugh" (4).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across hew, hue, Hugh: h. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
hew
3 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVC
Inventory ehw · private ew
hue
3 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVV
Inventory ehu · private eu
Hugh
4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVCC
Inventory ghu · private gu
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "hew" when you mean: To chop away at; to whittle down; to mow down.
- Write "hue" when you mean: A color, or shade of color; tint; dye.
- Write "Hugh" when you mean: A male given name from the Germanic languages.
Known mistypes of these spellings
Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.
- Hugh ← hguh · hhugh · huggh · hughh · huhg · uhgh
Each spelling
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 3-spelling cluster (hew, hue, Hugh). Here's where to go from here.
- "Hugh" is the most frequent headword in this 3-spelling cluster (rank #7,018 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: who · Hu · hoo. 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.