English homophones
slay/sleigh
"slay" is a verb; "sleigh" is a noun - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Grammar picks the spelling
Same sound, different grammar: "slay" arrives as a verb, while "sleigh" is a noun. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "sl" then splits - "slay" (4 letters) vs "sleigh" (6).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across slay, sleigh: ls. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
slay
4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CCVV
Inventory alsy · private ay
sleigh
6 letters · 2 vowels · shape CCVVCC
Inventory eghils · private eghi
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "slay" when you mean: To kill; to murder.
- Write "sleigh" when you mean: A vehicle, generally pulled by an animal, which moves over snow or ice on runners, used for transporting persons or goods. (contrast "sle…
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 2-spelling cluster (slay, sleigh). Here's where to go from here.
- "slay" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #18,433 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: seeks · Sikhs. 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.