English homophones

knew/new/nu

"knew" is a verb; "new" is an adjective - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #30 of 1,007 English groups.

Data vintage 2026-09-03

Grammar picks the spelling

Same sound, different grammar: "knew" arrives as a verb, while "new" is an adjective. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.

No shared spelling stem: "knew" is 4 letters, "new" is 3; only the sound ties them.
No shared spelling stem: "knew" is 4 letters, "nu" is 2; only the sound ties them.
No shared spelling stem: "new" is 3 letters, "nu" is 2; only the sound ties them.

Shared letters across knew, new, nu: n. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.

Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.

verb · /ˈnjuː/ · #635 frequency

simple past of know

adjective · /njuː/ · #65 frequency

Recently made, or created.

noun · /njuː/ · #13,967 frequency

The letter of the Greek alphabet Ν (N) and ν (n).

What to do next

You've reviewed the 3-spelling cluster (knew, new, nu). Here's where to go from here.

"new" is the most frequent headword in this 3-spelling cluster (rank #65 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: night · knight · nite. 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.