English homophones
sauce/source
"source" (#743 written frequency) beats "sauce" (#4,330) in this 2-word /sɔːs/ cluster. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Frequency splits the cluster
These 2 spellings keep the same /sɔːs/ reading, but written frequency splits them hard: "source" leads at #743, with "sauce" trailing at #4,330.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- No shared spelling stem: "sauce" is 5 letters, "source" is 6; only the sound ties them.
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across sauce, source: cesu. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
sauce
5 letters · 3 vowels · shape CVVCV
Inventory acesu · private a
source
6 letters · 3 vowels · shape CVVCCV
Inventory ceorsu · private or
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "sauce" when you mean: A liquid (often thickened) condiment or accompaniment to food.
- Write "source" when you mean: The person, place, or thing from which something (information, goods, etc.) comes or is acquired.
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 (sauce, source). Here's where to go from here.
- "source" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #743 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: said · sed. Nearby cluster
- Each spelling in "sauce, source" has its own headword page with definition, IPA, and misspelling variants. First entry
PlainSpell is a reference corpus, not spelling advice. Verify unusual forms in context.