English homophones
wen/when
"wen" is a noun; "when" 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: "wen" arrives as a noun, while "when" is an adverb. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- No shared spelling stem: "wen" is 3 letters, "when" is 4; only the sound ties them.
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across wen, when: enw. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
wen
3 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVC
Inventory enw · no private letters vs siblings
when
4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CCVC
Inventory ehnw · private h
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "wen" when you mean: A cyst on the skin; a tumor or wart.
- Write "when" when you mean: At what time? At which time? Upon which occasion or circumstance? Used to introduce direct or indirect questions about time.
Known mistypes of these spellings
Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.
- when ← hwen · wehn · whenn · whhen · whne · wwhen
Each spelling
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (wen, when). Here's where to go from here.
- "when" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #48 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.