English homophones

pains/panes

"pains" (#9,077 written frequency) beats "panes" (#33,357) in this 2-word /peɪnz/ cluster. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.

Data vintage

Frequency splits the cluster

These 2 spellings keep the same /peɪnz/ reading, but written frequency splits them hard: "pains" leads at #9,077, with "panes" trailing at #33,357.

Spelling pairs in this cluster

  • Shared stem "pa" then splits - "pains" (5 letters) vs "panes" (5).

Orthographic DNA of this cluster

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

  • pains

    5 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVVCC

    Inventory ainps · private i

  • panes

    5 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVCVC

    Inventory aenps · private e

Pick the spelling from the meaning

  • Write "pains" when you mean: plural of pain
  • Write "panes" when you mean: plural of pane

Known mistypes of these spellings

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

  • painsapins · painns · painss · paisn · panis · pians
  • panesapnes · paens · paness · pannes · panse · pnaes

Each spelling

pains

noun · /peɪnz/ · #9,077 frequency

plural of pain

panes

noun · /peɪnz/ · #33,357 frequency

plural of pane

Nearby English homophone groups

What to do next

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

  • "pains" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #9,077 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: plane · plain. Nearby cluster
  • Each spelling in "pains, panes" has its own headword page with definition, IPA, and misspelling variants. First entry

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