English homophones

marred/mod

"marred" is an adjective; "mod" 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: "marred" arrives as an adjective, while "mod" is a noun. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.

Spelling pairs in this cluster

  • No shared spelling stem: "marred" is 6 letters, "mod" is 3; only the sound ties them.

Orthographic DNA of this cluster

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

  • marred

    6 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVCCVC

    Inventory ademr · private aer

  • mod

    3 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVC

    Inventory dmo · private o

Pick the spelling from the meaning

  • Write "marred" when you mean: Spoiled; harmed or damaged.
  • Write "mod" when you mean: An unconventionally modern style of fashionable dress originating in England in the 1960s, characterized by ankle-length black trenchcoat…

Known mistypes of these spellings

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

  • marredamrred · mared · marerd · marrde · marredd · mmarred

Each spelling

marred

adjective · /mɑːd/ · #25,839 frequency

Spoiled; harmed or damaged.

mod

noun · /mɑd/ · #8,172 frequency

An unconventionally modern style of fashionable dress originating in England in the 1960s, characterized by ankle-length black trenchcoats and sunglasses.

Nearby English homophone groups

What to do next

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

  • "mod" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #8,172 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: mole · mol. 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