English homophones
yay/yea
"yay" is an intj; "yea" 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: "yay" arrives as an intj, while "yea" is an adverb. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- No shared spelling stem: "yay" is 3 letters, "yea" is 3; only the sound ties them.
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across yay, yea: ay. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
yay
3 letters · 3 vowels · shape VVV
Inventory ay · no private letters vs siblings
yea
3 letters · 3 vowels · shape VVV
Inventory aey · private e
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "yay" when you mean: An expression of happiness.
- Write "yea" when you mean: Yes, indeed.
Each spelling
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (yay, yea). Here's where to go from here.
- "yea" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #4,645 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: yeah · yer. 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.