English homophones

sons/suns

"sons" (#3,028 written frequency) beats "suns" (#13,249) in this 2-word /sʌnz/ cluster. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.

Data vintage

Frequency splits the cluster

These 2 spellings keep the same /sʌnz/ reading, but written frequency splits them hard: "sons" leads at #3,028, with "suns" trailing at #13,249.

Spelling pairs in this cluster

  • No shared spelling stem: "sons" is 4 letters, "suns" is 4; only the sound ties them.

Orthographic DNA of this cluster

Shared letters across sons, suns: ns. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.

  • sons

    4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVCC

    Inventory nos · private o

  • suns

    4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVCC

    Inventory nsu · private u

Pick the spelling from the meaning

  • Write "sons" when you mean: plural of son
  • Write "suns" when you mean: plural of sun

Known mistypes of these spellings

Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.

  • sonsosns · snos · sonns · sonss · sosn · ssons
  • sunssnus · ssuns · sunns · sunss · susn · usns

Each spelling

sons

noun · /sʌnz/ · #3,028 frequency

plural of son

suns

noun · /sʌnz/ · #13,249 frequency

plural of sun

Nearby English homophone groups

What to do next

You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (sons, suns). Here's where to go from here.

  • "sons" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #3,028 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: Sunday · sundae. Nearby cluster
  • Each spelling in "sons, suns" has its own headword page with definition, IPA, and misspelling variants. First entry

PlainSpell is a reference corpus, not spelling advice. Verify unusual forms in context.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list