English homophones
mair/mare/mayor
"mair" is an adjective; "mare" is a noun - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #30 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Grammar picks the spelling
Same sound, different grammar: "mair" arrives as an adjective, while "mare" is a noun. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "ma" then splits - "mair" (4 letters) vs "mare" (4).
- Shared stem "ma" then splits - "mair" (4 letters) vs "mayor" (5).
- Shared stem "ma" then splits - "mare" (4 letters) vs "mayor" (5).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across mair, mare, mayor: amr. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
mair
4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVVC
Inventory aimr · private i
mare
4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVCV
Inventory aemr · private e
mayor
5 letters · 3 vowels · shape CVVVC
Inventory amory · private oy
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "mair" when you mean: more
- Write "mare" when you mean: An adult female horse.
- Write "mayor" when you mean: The chief executive of the municipal government of a city, borough, etc., formerly (historical) usually appointed as a caretaker by Europ…
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
noun · /ˈmɛə/ · #2,396 frequency
The chief executive of the municipal government of a city, borough, etc., formerly (historical) usually appointed as a caretaker by European royal courts but now usually appointed or elected locally.
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 3-spelling cluster (mair, mare, mayor). Here's where to go from here.
- "mayor" is the most frequent headword in this 3-spelling cluster (rank #2,396 in English). Full entry
- Among English homophone groups, a cluster of 3 spellings ranks #30 by size (1,007 groups in this vintage). Corpus statistics
- Explore a nearby 3-spelling cluster: messy · Messi · merci. 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.