English homophones
stationary/stationery
"stationary" is an adjective; "stationery" 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: "stationary" arrives as an adjective, while "stationery" is a noun. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "station" then splits - "stationary" (10 letters) vs "stationery" (10).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across stationary, stationery: ainorsty. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
stationary
10 letters · 5 vowels · shape CCVCVVCVCV
Inventory ainorsty · no private letters vs siblings
stationery
10 letters · 5 vowels · shape CCVCVVCVCV
Inventory aeinorsty · private e
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "stationary" when you mean: Not moving.
- Write "stationery" when you mean: Writing materials, envelopes, office materials.
Known mistypes of these spellings
Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.
- stationary ← sattionary · sstationary · staitonary · statinoary · statioanry · stationarry
- stationery ← sattionery · sstationery · staitonery · statinoery · statioenry · stationerry
Each spelling
noun · /ˈsteɪʃ(ə)n(ə)ɹi/ · #19,979 frequency
Writing materials, envelopes, office materials.
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (stationary, stationery). Here's where to go from here.
- "stationary" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #12,509 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: Segway · segue. 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.