English homophones
passed/past
"passed" is a verb; "past" 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: "passed" arrives as a verb, while "past" is a noun. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "pas" then splits - "passed" (6 letters) vs "past" (4).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across passed, past: aps. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
passed
6 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVCCVC
Inventory adeps · private de
past
4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVCC
Inventory apst · private t
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "passed" when you mean: simple past and past participle of pass
- Write "past" when you mean: The period of time that has already happened, in contrast to the present and the future.
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
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (passed, past). Here's where to go from here.
- "past" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #437 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: panda · pander. 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.