English homophones
mails/males
"mails" is a verb; "males" 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: "mails" arrives as a verb, while "males" is a noun. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "ma" then splits - "mails" (5 letters) vs "males" (5).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across mails, males: alms. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
mails
5 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVVCC
Inventory ailms · private i
males
5 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVCVC
Inventory aelms · private e
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "mails" when you mean: third-person singular simple present indicative of mail
- Write "males" when you mean: plural of male
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 (mails, males). Here's where to go from here.
- "males" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #5,061 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: Micah · mica. 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.