English homophones
rood/rude
"rood" is a noun; "rude" is an adjective - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Grammar picks the spelling
Same sound, different grammar: "rood" arrives as a noun, while "rude" is an adjective. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- No shared spelling stem: "rood" is 4 letters, "rude" is 4; only the sound ties them.
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across rood, rude: dr. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
rood
4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVVC
Inventory dor · private o
rude
4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVCV
Inventory deru · private eu
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "rood" when you mean: A crucifix, cross, especially in a church.
- Write "rude" when you mean: Lacking in refinement or civility; bad-mannered; discourteous.
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 2-spelling cluster (rood, rude). Here's where to go from here.
- "rude" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #4,709 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: rough · ruff. 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.