English homophones

sewing/sowing

"sewing" (#11,459 written frequency) beats "sowing" (#29,099) in this 2-word /ˈsəʊɪŋ/ cluster. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.

Data vintage

Frequency splits the cluster

These 2 spellings keep the same /ˈsəʊɪŋ/ reading, but written frequency splits them hard: "sewing" leads at #11,459, with "sowing" trailing at #29,099.

Spelling pairs in this cluster

  • No shared spelling stem: "sewing" is 6 letters, "sowing" is 6; only the sound ties them.

Orthographic DNA of this cluster

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

  • sewing

    6 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVCVCC

    Inventory eginsw · private e

  • sowing

    6 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVCVCC

    Inventory ginosw · private o

Pick the spelling from the meaning

  • Write "sewing" when you mean: present participle and gerund of sew
  • Write "sowing" when you mean: present participle and gerund of sow

Known mistypes of these spellings

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

  • sewingeswing · seiwng · sewign · sewingg · sewinng · sewnig
  • sowingoswing · soiwng · sowign · sowingg · sowinng · sownig

Each spelling

sewing

verb · /ˈsəʊɪŋ/ · #11,459 frequency

present participle and gerund of sew

sowing

verb · /ˈsəʊɪŋ/ · #29,099 frequency

present participle and gerund of sow

Nearby English homophone groups

What to do next

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

  • "sewing" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #11,459 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: SWAT · swot. Nearby cluster
  • Each spelling in "sewing, sowing" 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.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list