English homophones

win/wynn

"win" is a verb; "wynn" 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: "win" arrives as a verb, while "wynn" is a noun. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.

Spelling pairs in this cluster

  • No shared spelling stem: "win" is 3 letters, "wynn" is 4; only the sound ties them.

Orthographic DNA of this cluster

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

  • win

    3 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVC

    Inventory inw · private i

  • wynn

    4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVCC

    Inventory nwy · private y

Pick the spelling from the meaning

  • Write "win" when you mean: To conquer, defeat.
  • Write "wynn" when you mean: A letter of the Old English alphabet, ƿ, borrowed from the futhark and used to represent the sound of w; replaced in Middle English times…

Known mistypes of these spellings

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

  • wynnwnyn · wwynn · wyn · wyynn · ywnn

Each spelling

win

verb · /wɪn/ · #408 frequency

To conquer, defeat.

wynn

noun · /wɪn/ · #25,260 frequency

A letter of the Old English alphabet, ƿ, borrowed from the futhark and used to represent the sound of w; replaced in Middle English times by the digraph uu, which later developed into the letter w.

Nearby English homophone groups

What to do next

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

  • "win" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #408 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: won't · wont. 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.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list