English homophones
per/purr
"per" is a preposition; "purr" 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: "per" arrives as a preposition, while "purr" is a verb. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- No shared spelling stem: "per" is 3 letters, "purr" is 4; only the sound ties them.
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across per, purr: pr. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
per
3 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVC
Inventory epr · private e
purr
4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVCC
Inventory pru · private u
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "per" when you mean: For each.
- Write "purr" when you mean: To make a vibrating sound in its throat when contented or in certain other conditions.
Known mistypes of these spellings
Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.
- purr ← ppurr · prur · uprr
Each spelling
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (per, purr). Here's where to go from here.
- "per" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #339 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: peas · pease. 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.