English homophones

lb/pound

"pound" (#4,180 written frequency) beats "lb" (#7,936) in this 2-word /paʊnd/ cluster. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.

Data vintage

Frequency splits the cluster

These 2 spellings keep the same /paʊnd/ reading, but written frequency splits them hard: "pound" leads at #4,180, with "lb" trailing at #7,936.

Spelling pairs in this cluster

  • No shared spelling stem: "lb" is 2 letters, "pound" is 5; only the sound ties them.

Orthographic DNA of this cluster

Shared letters across lb, pound: none. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.

  • lb

    2 letters · 0 vowels · shape CC

    Inventory bl · private bl

  • pound

    5 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVVCC

    Inventory dnopu · private dnopu

Pick the spelling from the meaning

  • Write "lb" when you mean: Abbreviation of pound (“unit of weight”).
  • Write "pound" when you mean: A unit of weight in various measurement systems.

Known mistypes of these spellings

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

  • poundopund · ponud · poudn · poundd · pounnd · ppound

Each spelling

lb

noun · /paʊnd/ · #7,936 frequency

Abbreviation of pound (“unit of weight”).

pound

noun · /paʊnd/ · #4,180 frequency

A unit of weight in various measurement systems.

Nearby English homophone groups

What to do next

You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (lb, pound). Here's where to go from here.

  • "pound" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #4,180 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: Leighton · Leyton. Nearby cluster
  • Each spelling in "lb, pound" 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.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list