English homophones
raise/rays/res
"raise" is a verb; "rays" is a noun - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #30 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Grammar picks the spelling
Same sound, different grammar: "raise" arrives as a verb, while "rays" is a noun. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "ra" then splits - "raise" (5 letters) vs "rays" (4).
- No shared spelling stem: "raise" is 5 letters, "res" is 3; only the sound ties them.
- No shared spelling stem: "rays" is 4 letters, "res" is 3; only the sound ties them.
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across raise, rays, res: rs. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
raise
5 letters · 3 vowels · shape CVVCV
Inventory aeirs · private aei
rays
4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVVC
Inventory arsy · private ay
res
3 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVC
Inventory ers · private e
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "raise" when you mean: To cause to rise; to lift or elevate.
- Write "rays" when you mean: plural of ray
- Write "res" when you mean: plural of re
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 3-spelling cluster (raise, rays, res). Here's where to go from here.
- "raise" is the most frequent headword in this 3-spelling cluster (rank #1,836 in English). Full entry
- Among English homophone groups, a cluster of 3 spellings ranks #30 by size (1,007 groups in this vintage). Corpus statistics
- Explore a nearby 3-spelling cluster: rue · roo · roux. 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.