English homophones

wart/wot

"wart" is a noun; "wot" is a verb - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.

Data vintage 2026-09-03

Grammar picks the spelling

Same sound, different grammar: "wart" arrives as a noun, while "wot" is a verb. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.

No shared spelling stem: "wart" is 4 letters, "wot" is 3; only the sound ties them.

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

Write "wart" when you mean: A type of deformed growth occurring on the skin caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV).
Write "wot" when you mean: To know (in the sense of knowing a fact).

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

noun · /wɔːt/ · #38,680 frequency

A type of deformed growth occurring on the skin caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV).

verb · /wɔt/ · #28,090 frequency

To know (in the sense of knowing a fact).

What to do next

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

"wot" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #28,090 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: whiskey · whisky. 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.