English homophones

Markey/marquee

"Markey" is a name; "marquee" 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: "Markey" arrives as a name, while "marquee" is a noun. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.

Spelling pairs in this cluster

  • Shared stem "mar" then splits - "Markey" (6 letters) vs "marquee" (7).

Orthographic DNA of this cluster

Shared letters across Markey, marquee: aemr. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.

  • Markey

    6 letters · 3 vowels · shape CVCCVV

    Inventory aekmry · private ky

  • marquee

    7 letters · 4 vowels · shape CVCCVVV

    Inventory aemqru · private qu

Pick the spelling from the meaning

  • Write "Markey" when you mean: A surname from Irish.
  • Write "marquee" when you mean: A large tent with open sides, used for outdoors entertainment.

Known mistypes of these spellings

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

  • Markeyamrkey · makrey · mareky · markeyy · markkey · markye
  • marqueeamrquee · maqruee · marqeue · marqquee · marrquee · maruqee

Each spelling

Markey

name · /ˈmɑː(ɹ)ki/ · #47,180 frequency

A surname from Irish.

marquee

noun · /mɑː(ɹ)ˈkiː/ · #23,031 frequency

A large tent with open sides, used for outdoors entertainment.

Nearby English homophone groups

What to do next

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

  • "marquee" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #23,031 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: Montague · Montagu. 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.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list