English homophones
chou/shoe/shoo
"chou" is a noun; "shoo" 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: "chou" arrives as a noun, while "shoo" is a verb. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- No shared spelling stem: "chou" is 4 letters, "shoe" is 4; only the sound ties them.
- No shared spelling stem: "chou" is 4 letters, "shoo" is 4; only the sound ties them.
- Single-letter fork: "shoe" keeps e, "shoo" writes o at letter 4.
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across chou, shoe, shoo: ho. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
chou
4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CCVV
Inventory chou · private cu
shoe
4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CCVV
Inventory ehos · private es
shoo
4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CCVV
Inventory hos · private s
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "chou" when you mean: Choux pastry, usually in the form of a small round cake with a sweet filling.
- Write "shoe" when you mean: A protective covering for the foot, with a bottom part composed of thick leather or plastic sole and often a thicker heel, and a softer u…
- Write "shoo" when you mean: To induce someone or something to leave.
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
noun · /ʃuː/ · #29,595 frequency
Choux pastry, usually in the form of a small round cake with a sweet filling.
noun · /ˈʃuː/ · #4,796 frequency
A protective covering for the foot, with a bottom part composed of thick leather or plastic sole and often a thicker heel, and a softer upper part made of leather or synthetic material. Shoes generally do not extend above the ankle, as opposed to boots, which do.
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 3-spelling cluster (chou, shoe, shoo). Here's where to go from here.
- "shoe" is the most frequent headword in this 3-spelling cluster (rank #4,796 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.