English homophones
hic/hick
"hic" is an intj; "hick" 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: "hic" arrives as an intj, while "hick" is a noun. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "hic" then splits - "hic" (3 letters) vs "hick" (4).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across hic, hick: chi. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
hic
3 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVC
Inventory chi · no private letters vs siblings
hick
4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVCC
Inventory chik · private k
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "hic" when you mean: An approximation to the sound of a hiccup, used e.g. to indicate drunkenness.
- Write "hick" when you mean: An awkward, naive, clumsy and/or rude country person.
Known mistypes of these spellings
Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.
- hick ← hcik · hhick · hicck · hickk · hikc · ihck
Each spelling
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (hic, hick). Here's where to go from here.
- "hick" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #40,736 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: Hendrix · Hendricks. 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.