English homophones

poo/Pooh

"poo" is a noun; "Pooh" is a name - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.

Data vintage

Grammar picks the spelling

Same sound, different grammar: "poo" arrives as a noun, while "Pooh" is a name. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.

Spelling pairs in this cluster

  • Shared stem "poo" then splits - "poo" (3 letters) vs "Pooh" (4).

Orthographic DNA of this cluster

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

  • poo

    3 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVV

    Inventory op · no private letters vs siblings

  • Pooh

    4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVVC

    Inventory hop · private h

Pick the spelling from the meaning

  • Write "poo" when you mean: Alternative spelling of pooh: an instance of saying "poo".
  • Write "Pooh" when you mean: Ellipsis of Winnie the Pooh.

Known mistypes of these spellings

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

  • Poohopoh · poh · poho · poohh · ppooh

Each spelling

poo

noun · /puː/ · #14,190 frequency

Alternative spelling of pooh: an instance of saying "poo".

Pooh

name · /puː/ · #19,943 frequency

Ellipsis of Winnie the Pooh.

Nearby English homophone groups

What to do next

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

  • "poo" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #14,190 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: per · purr. 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