English homophones
which/witch
"which" is a conjunction; "witch" 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: "which" arrives as a conjunction, while "witch" is a noun. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- No shared spelling stem: "which" is 5 letters, "witch" is 5; only the sound ties them.
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across which, witch: chiw. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
which
5 letters · 1 vowels · shape CCVCC
Inventory chiw · no private letters vs siblings
witch
5 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVCCC
Inventory chitw · private t
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "which" when you mean: And.
- Write "witch" when you mean: A person (now usually particularly a woman) who uses magical or similar supernatural powers to influence or predict events.
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 (which, witch). Here's where to go from here.
- "which" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #59 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.