English homophones
red/redd
"red" is a noun; "redd" 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: "red" arrives as a noun, while "redd" is a verb. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "red" then splits - "red" (3 letters) vs "redd" (4).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across red, redd: der. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
red
3 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVC
Inventory der · no private letters vs siblings
redd
4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVCC
Inventory der · no private letters vs siblings
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "red" when you mean: The colour of the setting sun, blood, and strawberries; the colour which is evoked by the longest visible wavelengths (between about 625–…
- Write "redd" when you mean: To free from entanglement.
Known mistypes of these spellings
Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.
- redd ← erdd · rded · rredd
Each spelling
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (red, redd). Here's where to go from here.
- "red" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #480 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: wrote · rote. 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.