Homophone Finder
Type a word and see the words that sound exactly like it — their, there and they're; read, red and reed — matched phoneme by phoneme against the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary and defined so you can pick the right spelling. A list of the homophones writers confuse most sits underneath. Free, no sign-up.
Results appear as you type. Click any result to look up its own homophones.
Type a word to find the words that are pronounced exactly like it, with a definition for each.
Try: · · · ·
Homophones people often confuse
Click a set to look it up. Each tip is a quick way to choose the right spelling.
Their shows ownership, there points to a place, and they're is they are.
Two is the number; too means also or excessively; to is everything else.
It's always stands for it is or it has; the possessive its has no apostrophe.
Who's is who is or who has; whose asks about ownership.
You're is you are; your belongs to you.
You hear with your ear; here is the opposite of there.
Write is to put words down; right is correct or the opposite of left; a rite is a ceremony.
Weather is the sky and the temperature; whether introduces a choice.
Which asks you to choose; a witch casts spells.
A principal is a person or the main thing; a principle is a rule or belief.
Stationary means not moving; stationery is paper and pens (the e is for envelope).
Bare means uncovered; a bear is the animal, and to bear is to carry or endure.
Break means to snap or pause; a brake slows a vehicle.
Buy is to purchase; by is a preposition; bye ends a conversation.
Cite a source; sight is vision; a site is a place or a website.
A course is a class or a route; coarse means rough.
Dear is a greeting or beloved; a deer is the animal.
Flour is ground grain; a flower blooms.
Four is the number; fore means at the front; for is the everyday preposition.
Knew is the past of know; new is not old; a gnu is an antelope.
Know means to be aware of; no is the negative.
Mail is post; male is the opposite of female.
Meat is food; meet is to encounter; mete (out) is to deal out a punishment.
A pair is two of something; pare is to trim; a pear is a fruit.
Peace is calm; a piece is a part of a whole.
Plain means simple or a flat grassland; a plane flies, or is a flat surface.
Rain falls; a monarch's reign is their rule; a rein steers a horse.
A role is a part you play; a roll is a turn, a list, or a bread.
The sea is salt water; see is to look.
Sole means only or the bottom of a foot; the soul is the spirit.
Some is an unspecified amount; a sum is a total.
A son is a male child; the sun is the star.
Steal is to take what is not yours; steel is the metal.
A tail is at the back of an animal; a tale is a story.
Threw is the past of throw; through means from one side to the other.
The waist is the middle of the body; waste is what is thrown away or squandered.
Wait means to stay until something happens; weight is how heavy something is.
A way is a route or a method; weigh is to measure heaviness; whey is a milk by-product.
Weak is not strong; a week is seven days.
Wear clothes; where asks about place; wares are goods for sale.
Wood comes from trees; would is the modal verb.
Air is what we breathe; an heir inherits; to err is to make a mistake.
Aloud means out loud; allowed means permitted.
Ate is the past of eat; eight is the number.
A board is a flat piece or a committee; bored means uninterested.
Capital is a city, money, or an upper-case letter; the Capitol is a legislature's building.
A cell is the unit of life or a small room; sell is to trade for money.
Cereal is grain or breakfast food; serial means arranged in a series.
To die is to stop living; to dye is to colour.
Fair means just or light-coloured; a fare is what you pay to travel.
A hole is an opening; whole means complete.
An hour is sixty minutes; our shows that something is ours.
Idle means doing nothing; an idol is someone or something worshipped.
Led is the past of lead (to guide); the metal lead is also said led.
Made is the past of make; a maid is a household worker.
Main means chief; a mane is a lion's or horse's long hair.
Morning is the start of the day; mourning is grieving.
None means not any; a nun is a member of a religious order.
One is the number; won is the past of win.
A pause is a short stop; paws are animal feet.
Prey is hunted; to pray is to address a god.
Profit is money gained; a prophet speaks for a god.
A sail catches wind; a sale is a transaction or a discount.
A scene is a view or part of a play; seen is the past participle of see.
Sew with a needle; so links ideas; sow seeds (the animal sow rhymes with cow).
A stair is a step; to stare is to look hard.
A suite is a set of rooms or pieces; sweet tastes of sugar.
A symbol stands for something; a cymbal is a brass percussion plate.
Vain means conceited or futile; a vane shows the wind; a vein carries blood.
To wail is to cry loudly; a whale is a sea mammal.
Word data from the Datamuse API
Pronunciations: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University (BSD-style licence).
How to Use the Homophone Finder
- Type a word. Results appear as you type. Try bear, read or their; a word with several pronunciations, such as read, gets one set of homophones for each.
- Read the sets. Each card is headed by the pronunciation it matches, in IPA with the dictionary's own ARPAbet underneath. Everyday words come first, most frequent first, each with a short definition.
- Open the last line of a card for names and rare spellings. Words such as baer or reid sound the same but are mostly surnames or old spellings, so they are folded away.
- Click or copy. Click a result to look up its homophones in turn, or copy it straight into your draft.
What Makes Two Words Homophones
Homophones are words that are pronounced the same but differ in meaning, and usually in spelling: bare and bear, night and knight, to, too and two. English has so many because its spelling kept the history of words that its pronunciation later wore down. Four related terms are easy to mix up, and only the first is what this tool finds.
| Term | Same sound | Same spelling | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Homophone | Yes | Usually not | sea / see, their / there |
| Homograph | Not required | Yes | lead (metal) / lead (to guide) |
| Homonym | Yes | Yes | bank (of a river) / bank (for money) |
| Heteronym | No | Yes | tear (a rip) / tear (from the eye) |
How the Matching Works
The tool does not compare spellings or guess from letters. It uses the Carnegie Mellon University Pronouncing Dictionary, which lists the phonemes of more than 120,000 English words in General American pronunciation. Two words are homophones when their phoneme strings are identical: read in the past tense is R EH1 D, the same as red, so the two match. Every pronunciation the dictionary records is kept, which is why read also matches reed (R IY1 D) in a second set.
The digit after a vowel marks stress, and by default it has to match as well. Tick Ignore stress differences to compare the sounds only. The difference matters for names more than for ordinary words: the dictionary gives Argyll and Argyle the same sounds with the stress marked slightly differently, so they join only when stress is ignored. For most everyday words the two settings give the same answer.
Homophony depends on the accent. The dictionary records General American, which pronounces cot and caught alike, and Mary, merry and marry alike. In many British accents sauce and source match instead, because the r is silent; in General American they do not. Treat a result as true for the accent the dictionary records.
Why Homophones Slip Past Your Spell Checker
Every homophone is a correctly spelled word, so a spell checker passes the wrong one without a flag: the principle of the school is spelled perfectly and wrong. Academic writing is full of these traps because the vocabulary is formal and half-remembered. A few worth knowing:
- cite / sight / site. You cite a source, sight is vision, and a site is a place or a website. Mixing them up in a reference list is easy to do and easy to spot.
- principal / principle. A principle is a rule or a belief; a principal is the head of a school, the main investigator, or the main sum of a loan.
- its / it's. The possessive has no apostrophe; it's is only ever it is or it has.
- weather / whether. One is the sky, the other introduces a choice.
- peak / peek / pique. A peak is a summit, a peek is a glance, and to pique interest is to arouse it.
Near misses are the other half of the problem, and they are not homophones: affect and effect, accept and except, and advice and advise are pronounced differently, so they will not appear here. The Commonly Confused Words Checker flags those pairs in a pasted draft. The sets under the search box cover the true homophones writers confuse most, each with a tip for choosing between them.
Using Homophones on Purpose
Writers of verse and humour use homophones deliberately. The old joke that a bicycle cannot stand up by itself because it is two-tired works only because two-tired sounds like too tired, and poets use homophones as sound echoes inside a line. For rhymes that merely end alike rather than sound identical, use the Rhyme Finder; for the pronunciation of any word in phonetic symbols, the English to IPA Converter.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is a homophone?
- A homophone is a word that is pronounced the same as another word but has a different meaning, and usually a different spelling — write and right, flour and flower. Words that are spelled the same and sound the same, such as the two meanings of bank, are homonyms, not homophones.
- What is the difference between homophones, homographs and homonyms?
- Homophones share a sound, homographs share a spelling, and homonyms share both. A heteronym is a homograph with a different pronunciation, like tear a page and a tear in the eye. This finder lists only words that share every sound.
- Where do the homophones come from?
- From the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, a free pronunciation dictionary from Carnegie Mellon University. Two words match when all their phonemes are identical. Definitions and frequencies come from the Datamuse API, which uses Wiktionary and WordNet for meanings.
- Why does a word show more than one set of homophones?
- Because it has more than one pronunciation. Read is pronounced like red in the past tense and like reed in the present, so it has a set for each. Tear and lead work the same way. Each card shows the pronunciation it matches.
- Why are some homophones I expected missing?
- Usually because the accent differs. The dictionary records General American, so pairs that only match in another accent, such as sauce and source in non-rhotic British English, are not listed. A word that is not in the dictionary at all, such as a very new coinage, cannot be matched.
- What is a homophone for a word like bear that is also a verb?
- The finder matches sounds, not grammar, so bear returns bare whether you mean the animal or the verb. The definitions beside each result show which senses exist; check that the one you want is among them.
- Is my search sent anywhere?
- The word you type goes to CitationEasy's server, which fetches the definitions from the Datamuse API at api.datamuse.com, so Datamuse sees the word but not your IP address. CitationEasy keeps no record of who searched for what: answers are cached by word for up to a week, so a word anyone has looked up recently is answered without asking Datamuse again. Datamuse says it keeps a temporary log of queries and discards it at the end of the day. The pronunciation data is a static file your browser downloads once; the matching itself happens on your device.