English homophones
paw/pour
"paw" is a noun; "pour" is a verb - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Grammar picks the spelling
Same sound, different grammar: "paw" arrives as a noun, while "pour" is a verb. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- No shared spelling stem: "paw" is 3 letters, "pour" is 4; only the sound ties them.
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across paw, pour: p. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
paw
3 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVC
Inventory apw · private aw
pour
4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVVC
Inventory opru · private oru
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "paw" when you mean: The soft foot of a mammal or other animal, generally a quadruped, that has claws or nails; comparable to a human hand or foot.
- Write "pour" when you mean: To cause (liquid, or liquid-like substance) to flow in a stream, either out of a container or into it.
Known mistypes of these spellings
Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.
- pour ← opur · poru · pourr · ppour · puor
Each spelling
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (paw, pour). Here's where to go from here.
- "pour" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #6,085 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: poo · Pooh. 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.