English homophones

ring/wring

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

Spelling pairs in this cluster

  • No shared spelling stem: "ring" is 4 letters, "wring" is 5; only the sound ties them.

Orthographic DNA of this cluster

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

  • ring

    4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVCC

    Inventory ginr · no private letters vs siblings

  • wring

    5 letters · 1 vowels · shape CCVCC

    Inventory ginrw · private w

Pick the spelling from the meaning

  • Write "ring" when you mean: A solid object in the shape of a circle.
  • Write "wring" when you mean: Often followed by out: to squeeze or twist (something moist) tightly so that liquid is forced out.

Known mistypes of these spellings

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

  • ringirng · rign · ringg · rinng · rnig · rring
  • wringrwing · wirng · wrign · wringg · wrinng · wrnig

Each spelling

ring

noun · /ɹɪŋ/ · #1,644 frequency

A solid object in the shape of a circle.

wring

verb · /ɹɪŋ/ · #39,654 frequency

Often followed by out: to squeeze or twist (something moist) tightly so that liquid is forced out.

Nearby English homophone groups

What to do next

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

  • "ring" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #1,644 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.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list