English homophones
son/sun
"son" is a noun; "sun" is a name - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Grammar picks the spelling
Same sound, different grammar: "son" arrives as a noun, while "sun" is a name. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- No shared spelling stem: "son" is 3 letters, "sun" is 3; only the sound ties them.
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across son, sun: ns. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
son
3 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVC
Inventory nos · private o
sun
3 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVC
Inventory nsu · private u
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "son" when you mean: One's male offspring.
- Write "sun" when you mean: The star that is closest to the Earth.
Each spelling
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (son, sun). Here's where to go from here.
- "son" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #534 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: sulfate · sulphate. 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.