English homophones
humor/humour
"humor" (#5,226 written frequency) beats "humour" (#9,189) in this 2-word /hjuː.mə(ɹ)/ cluster. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Frequency splits the cluster
These 2 spellings keep the same /hjuː.mə(ɹ)/ reading, but written frequency splits them hard: "humor" leads at #5,226, with "humour" trailing at #9,189.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "humo" then splits - "humor" (5 letters) vs "humour" (6).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across humor, humour: hmoru. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
humor
5 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVCVC
Inventory hmoru · no private letters vs siblings
humour
6 letters · 3 vowels · shape CVCVVC
Inventory hmoru · no private letters vs siblings
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "humor" when you mean: US spelling of humour.
- Write "humour" when you mean: The quality of being amusing, comical, funny.
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 (humor, humour). Here's where to go from here.
- "humor" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #5,226 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: Hughes · hues. Nearby cluster
- Each spelling in "humor, humour" 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.