English homophones
wait/weight
"wait" is a verb; "weight" 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: "wait" arrives as a verb, while "weight" is a noun. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- No shared spelling stem: "wait" is 4 letters, "weight" is 6; only the sound ties them.
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across wait, weight: itw. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
wait
4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVVC
Inventory aitw · private a
weight
6 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVVCCC
Inventory eghitw · private egh
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "wait" when you mean: To delay movement or action until some event or time; to remain neglected or in readiness.
- Write "weight" when you mean: The downwards force an object experiences due to gravity.
Known mistypes of these spellings
Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.
Each spelling
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (wait, weight). Here's where to go from here.
- "wait" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #451 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: won't · wont. 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.