English homophones
raw/roar
"raw" is an adjective; "roar" 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: "raw" arrives as an adjective, while "roar" is a verb. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- No shared spelling stem: "raw" is 3 letters, "roar" is 4; only the sound ties them.
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across raw, roar: ar. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
raw
3 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVC
Inventory arw · private w
roar
4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVVC
Inventory aor · private o
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "raw" when you mean: (of food) Not cooked.
- Write "roar" when you mean: To make a loud, deep cry, especially from pain, anger, or other strong emotion.
Known mistypes of these spellings
Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.
- roar ← orar · raor · roarr · rora · rroar
Each spelling
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (raw, roar). Here's where to go from here.
- "raw" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #2,853 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: raining · reigning. 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.