English homophones
pause/paws
"pause" is a verb; "paws" 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: "pause" arrives as a verb, while "paws" is a noun. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "pa" then splits - "pause" (5 letters) vs "paws" (4).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across pause, paws: aps. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
pause
5 letters · 3 vowels · shape CVVCV
Inventory aepsu · private eu
paws
4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVCC
Inventory apsw · private w
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "pause" when you mean: To take a temporary rest, take a break for a short period after an effort.
- Write "paws" when you mean: plural of paw
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 (pause, paws). Here's where to go from here.
- "pause" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #7,166 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: plum · plumb. 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.