English homophones
sho/show
"sho" is an adverb; "show" 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: "sho" arrives as an adverb, while "show" is a verb. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "sho" then splits - "sho" (3 letters) vs "show" (4).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across sho, show: hos. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
sho
3 letters · 1 vowels · shape CCV
Inventory hos · no private letters vs siblings
show
4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CCVC
Inventory hosw · private w
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "sho" when you mean: Pronunciation spelling of sure.
- Write "show" when you mean: To display, to have somebody see (something).
Known mistypes of these spellings
Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.
- show ← hsow · shhow · showw · shwo · sohw · sshow
Each spelling
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (sho, show). Here's where to go from here.
- "show" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #199 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: stairs · stares. 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.