English homophones
weak/week
"weak" is an adjective; "week" 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: "weak" arrives as an adjective, while "week" is a noun. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "we" then splits - "weak" (4 letters) vs "week" (4).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across weak, week: ekw. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
weak
4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVVC
Inventory aekw · private a
week
4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVVC
Inventory ekw · no private letters vs siblings
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "weak" when you mean: Lacking in force (usually strength) or ability.
- Write "week" when you mean: Any period of seven consecutive days.
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 (weak, week). Here's where to go from here.
- "week" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #251 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: we'll · wheel. 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.