English homophones
lain/lane
"lain" is a verb; "lane" 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: "lain" arrives as a verb, while "lane" is a noun. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "la" then splits - "lain" (4 letters) vs "lane" (4).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across lain, lane: aln. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
lain
4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVVC
Inventory ailn · private i
lane
4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVCV
Inventory aeln · private e
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "lain" when you mean: past participle of lie (“to be oriented in a horizontal position, situated”)
- Write "lane" when you mean: A road, street, or similar thoroughfare.
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 (lain, lane). Here's where to go from here.
- "lane" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #2,630 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: layer · lair. 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.