English homophones
macs/max
"macs" is a noun; "max" is an adjective - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Grammar picks the spelling
Same sound, different grammar: "macs" arrives as a noun, while "max" is an adjective. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "ma" then splits - "macs" (4 letters) vs "max" (3).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across macs, max: am. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
macs
4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVCC
Inventory acms · private cs
max
3 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVC
Inventory amx · private x
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "macs" when you mean: plural of mac
- Write "max" when you mean: Maximum; maximal.
Known mistypes of these spellings
Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.
- macs ← amcs · maccs · macss · masc · mcas · mmacs
Each spelling
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (macs, max). Here's where to go from here.
- "max" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #2,222 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: Morrison · Morison. 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.