English homophones
cent/scent/sent
"cent" is a noun; "sent" is a verb - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #30 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Grammar picks the spelling
Same sound, different grammar: "cent" arrives as a noun, while "sent" is a verb. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- No shared spelling stem: "cent" is 4 letters, "scent" is 5; only the sound ties them.
- No shared spelling stem: "cent" is 4 letters, "sent" is 4; only the sound ties them.
- No shared spelling stem: "scent" is 5 letters, "sent" is 4; only the sound ties them.
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across cent, scent, sent: ent. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
cent
4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVCC
Inventory cent · private c
scent
5 letters · 1 vowels · shape CCVCC
Inventory censt · private cs
sent
4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVCC
Inventory enst · private s
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "cent" when you mean: A subunit of currency equal to one-hundredth of the main unit of currency in many countries. Symbol: ¢.
- Write "scent" when you mean: A distinctive smell.
- Write "sent" when you mean: simple past and past participle of send
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 3-spelling cluster (cent, scent, sent). Here's where to go from here.
- "sent" is the most frequent headword in this 3-spelling cluster (rank #722 in English). Full entry
- Among English homophone groups, a cluster of 3 spellings ranks #30 by size (1,007 groups in this vintage). Corpus statistics
- Explore a nearby 3-spelling cluster: Sacks · sax · sacs. 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.