English homophones

pleas/please

"pleas" is a noun; "please" 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: "pleas" arrives as a noun, while "please" is a verb. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.

Spelling pairs in this cluster

  • Shared stem "pleas" then splits - "pleas" (5 letters) vs "please" (6).

Orthographic DNA of this cluster

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

  • pleas

    5 letters · 2 vowels · shape CCVVC

    Inventory aelps · no private letters vs siblings

  • please

    6 letters · 3 vowels · shape CCVVCV

    Inventory aelps · no private letters vs siblings

Pick the spelling from the meaning

  • Write "pleas" when you mean: plural of plea
  • Write "please" when you mean: To make happy or satisfy; to give pleasure to.

Known mistypes of these spellings

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

  • pleaslpeas · pelas · plaes · pleass · plesa · plleas
  • pleaselpease · pelase · plaese · pleaes · pleasse · plesae

Each spelling

pleas

noun · /pliːz/ · #14,810 frequency

plural of plea

please

verb · /pliːz/ · #208 frequency

To make happy or satisfy; to give pleasure to.

Nearby English homophone groups

What to do next

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

  • "please" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #208 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: pool · Poole. 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.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list