homevshomesWhat's the difference?

Which to use

“home” and “homes” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#149
“home” frequency rank
#2,074
“homes” frequency rank
2223
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature home homes
Definition A dwelling. plural of home

Where the eye mixes home and homes

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.

4 ch
home
5 ch
homes

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

A purely visual mix-up. home (/həʊm/) and homes (/həʊmz/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “home” sits inside “homes”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 2223, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

home is recorded at frequency rank #149, classified as anoun, pronounced /həʊm/. homes is at rank #2,074, tagged as anoun, pronounced /həʊmz/.

Glosses for this pair are partially populated in our dataset, but the full side-by-side definitions above should still guide you to the right choice.

With a confusion score of 2223, this pair ranks #525,536 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of home vs homes

Shared letters: ehmo. Private to "home": -. Private to "homes": s.

"home" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "homes" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • homehhome · hmoe · hoem · ohme
  • homeshhomes · hmoes · hoems · homess · hommes · homse · ohmes

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "home" and "homes" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (/həʊm/ versus /həʊmz/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "home" or "homes"?
"home" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #149 in our English list, against #2,074 for "homes". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list