English homophones
loose/luce
"loose" is a verb; "luce" 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: "loose" arrives as a verb, while "luce" is a noun. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- No shared spelling stem: "loose" is 5 letters, "luce" is 4; only the sound ties them.
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across loose, luce: el. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
loose
5 letters · 3 vowels · shape CVVCV
Inventory elos · private os
luce
4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVCV
Inventory celu · private cu
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "loose" when you mean: To let loose, to free from restraints.
- Write "luce" when you mean: The pike, Esox lucius, when fully grown.
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 (loose, luce). Here's where to go from here.
- "loose" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #3,243 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: lane · lain. 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.