English homophones
wild/Wilde
"wild" is an adjective; "Wilde" is a name - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Grammar picks the spelling
Same sound, different grammar: "wild" arrives as an adjective, while "Wilde" is a name. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "wild" then splits - "wild" (4 letters) vs "Wilde" (5).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across wild, Wilde: dilw. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
wild
4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVCC
Inventory dilw · no private letters vs siblings
Wilde
5 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVCCV
Inventory deilw · private e
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "wild" when you mean: Untamed; not domesticated.
- Write "Wilde" when you mean: A surname from Middle English.
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 (wild, Wilde). Here's where to go from here.
- "wild" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #1,679 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: Wickham · Wycombe. 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.