English homophones
warn/worn
"warn" is a verb; "worn" is an adjective - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Grammar picks the spelling
Same sound, different grammar: "warn" arrives as a verb, while "worn" is an adjective. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- No shared spelling stem: "warn" is 4 letters, "worn" is 4; only the sound ties them.
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across warn, worn: nrw. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
warn
4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVCC
Inventory anrw · private a
worn
4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVCC
Inventory norw · private o
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "warn" when you mean: To make (someone) aware of (something impending); especially:
- Write "worn" when you mean: Damaged and shabby as a result of much use.
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 (warn, worn). Here's where to go from here.
- "worn" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #4,644 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: wot · wart. 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.