English homophones
lam/lamb
"lam" is a verb; "lamb" 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: "lam" arrives as a verb, while "lamb" is a noun. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "lam" then splits - "lam" (3 letters) vs "lamb" (4).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across lam, lamb: alm. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
lam
3 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVC
Inventory alm · no private letters vs siblings
lamb
4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVCC
Inventory ablm · private b
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "lam" when you mean: To beat or thrash.
- Write "lamb" when you mean: A young sheep.
Known mistypes of these spellings
Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.
- lamb ← almb · labm · lambb · lammb · llamb · lmab
Each spelling
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (lam, lamb). Here's where to go from here.
- "lamb" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #6,930 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: lobe · Loeb. 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.