English homophones

mets/Metz

"mets" is a noun; "Metz" is a name - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.

Data vintage

Grammar picks the spelling

Same sound, different grammar: "mets" arrives as a noun, while "Metz" is a name. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.

Spelling pairs in this cluster

  • Single-letter fork: "mets" keeps s, "Metz" writes z at letter 4.

Orthographic DNA of this cluster

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

  • mets

    4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVCC

    Inventory emst · private s

  • Metz

    4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVCC

    Inventory emtz · private z

Pick the spelling from the meaning

  • Write "mets" when you mean: Clipping of metastases.
  • Write "Metz" when you mean: The capital city of Moselle department, Grand Est, France.

Known mistypes of these spellings

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

  • metsemts · mest · metss · metts · mmets · mtes
  • Metzemtz · mettz · metzz · mezt · mmetz · mtez

Each spelling

mets

noun · /mɛts/ · #11,568 frequency

Clipping of metastases.

Metz

name · /mɛts/ · #34,589 frequency

The capital city of Moselle department, Grand Est, France.

Nearby English homophone groups

What to do next

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

  • "mets" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #11,568 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: males · mails. 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