English homophones
main/mane
"main" is an adjective; "mane" 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: "main" arrives as an adjective, while "mane" is a noun. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "ma" then splits - "main" (4 letters) vs "mane" (4).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across main, mane: amn. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
main
4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVVC
Inventory aimn · private i
mane
4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVCV
Inventory aemn · private e
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "main" when you mean: Of chief or leading importance; prime, principal.
- Write "mane" when you mean: Longer hair growth on back of neck of an animal, especially a horse or lion.
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 (main, mane). Here's where to go from here.
- "main" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #574 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: mill · mil. 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.