English homophones
tho/though
"tho" is an article; "though" is an adverb - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Grammar picks the spelling
Same sound, different grammar: "tho" arrives as an article, while "though" is an adverb. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "tho" then splits - "tho" (3 letters) vs "though" (6).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across tho, though: hot. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
tho
3 letters · 1 vowels · shape CCV
Inventory hot · no private letters vs siblings
though
6 letters · 2 vowels · shape CCVVCC
Inventory ghotu · private gu
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "tho" when you mean: The (plural form); those.
- Write "though" when you mean: Despite that; however.
Known mistypes of these spellings
Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.
- though ← htough · thhough · thoguh · thouggh · thoughh · thouhg
Each spelling
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (tho, though). Here's where to go from here.
- "though" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #298 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: tiered · teared. 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.