English homophones
how's/hows
2 "how's, hows" spellings share pronunciation /haʊz/; meaning alone separates them. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Meaning separates the spellings
how's, hows are held together only by pronunciation /haʊz/. With no grammar or frequency gap large enough to tip the choice, read each definition before you commit a spelling.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "how" then splits - "how's" (5 letters) vs "hows" (4).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across how's, hows: hosw. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
how's
4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVCC
Inventory hosw · no private letters vs siblings
hows
4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVCC
Inventory hosw · no private letters vs siblings
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "how's" when you mean: Contraction of how + is.
- Write "hows" when you mean: plural of how
Known mistypes of these spellings
Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.
- hows ← hhows · hosw · howss · howws · ohws
Each spelling
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (how's, hows). Here's where to go from here.
- "hows" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #38,890 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: humor · humour. Nearby cluster
- Each spelling in "how's, hows" 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.