English homophones
Sioux/sue
"Sioux" is a name; "sue" 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: "Sioux" arrives as a name, while "sue" is a verb. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- No shared spelling stem: "Sioux" is 5 letters, "sue" is 3; only the sound ties them.
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across Sioux, sue: su. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
Sioux
5 letters · 3 vowels · shape CVVVC
Inventory iosux · private iox
sue
3 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVV
Inventory esu · private e
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "Sioux" when you mean: Various formerly nomadic Native American tribes of the North American Great Plains.
- Write "sue" when you mean: To file a legal action against someone, generally a non-criminal (civil) action.
Known mistypes of these spellings
Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.
- Sioux ← isoux · siouxx · sioxu · siuox · soiux · ssioux
Each spelling
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (Sioux, sue). Here's where to go from here.
- "sue" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #4,985 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: SNP · snip. 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.