English homophones

suede/swayed

"suede" is a noun; "swayed" 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: "suede" arrives as a noun, while "swayed" is a verb. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.

Spelling pairs in this cluster

  • No shared spelling stem: "suede" is 5 letters, "swayed" is 6; only the sound ties them.

Orthographic DNA of this cluster

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

  • suede

    5 letters · 3 vowels · shape CVVCV

    Inventory desu · private u

  • swayed

    6 letters · 3 vowels · shape CCVVVC

    Inventory adeswy · private awy

Pick the spelling from the meaning

  • Write "suede" when you mean: A type of soft leather, made from calfskin, with a brushed texture to resemble fabric, often used to make boots, clothing and fashion acc…
  • Write "swayed" when you mean: simple past and past participle of sway

Known mistypes of these spellings

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

  • suedeseude · ssuede · sudee · suedde · sueed · usede
  • swayedsawyed · sswayed · swaeyd · swayde · swayedd · swayyed

Each spelling

suede

noun · /sweɪd/ · #21,085 frequency

A type of soft leather, made from calfskin, with a brushed texture to resemble fabric, often used to make boots, clothing and fashion accessories.

swayed

verb · /sweɪd/ · #22,518 frequency

simple past and past participle of sway

Nearby English homophone groups

What to do next

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

  • "suede" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #21,085 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: sown · sone. 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.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list