English homophones

rooted/routed

"rooted" is an adjective; "routed" 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: "rooted" arrives as an adjective, while "routed" is a verb. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.

Spelling pairs in this cluster

  • Shared stem "ro" then splits - "rooted" (6 letters) vs "routed" (6).

Orthographic DNA of this cluster

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

  • rooted

    6 letters · 3 vowels · shape CVVCVC

    Inventory deort · no private letters vs siblings

  • routed

    6 letters · 3 vowels · shape CVVCVC

    Inventory deortu · private u

Pick the spelling from the meaning

  • Write "rooted" when you mean: Having roots, or a certain type of roots.
  • Write "routed" when you mean: simple past and past participle of route

Known mistypes of these spellings

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

  • rootedoroted · rooetd · rootde · rootedd · rootted · roted
  • routedoruted · rotued · rouetd · routde · routedd · routted

Each spelling

rooted

adjective · /ˈɹuːtɪd/ · #9,395 frequency

Having roots, or a certain type of roots.

routed

verb · /ˈɹuː.tɪd/ · #19,442 frequency

simple past and past participle of route

Nearby English homophone groups

What to do next

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

  • "rooted" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #9,395 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: Riley · Reilly. 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