Pun Finder
Type a word to see how it's pronounced, then click the sounds you want to pun on. Every word that contains those sounds in the same order is listed below, with the shared sounds highlighted. If you skip sounds in the middle, the matching words must have something in that gap too.
The match can be anywhere in a word. To pin it to the start or end of the word, click the … before or after your selection so it becomes a bracket (⟦ or ⟧); turn on both to find words that sound the same. Stress is ignored unless you click the small stress mark (ˈ or ˌ) in the corner of a stressed vowel, which keeps only words that stress that vowel the same way.
Below each sound are similar sounds you can match instead of it, or as well as it. For vowels, these differ in one feature: higher or lower, rounded or unrounded, or further front or back. For consonants, they differ in voicing (like t and d). Words matched through a similar sound are highlighted in blue instead of yellow.
Results are grouped by how closely they match: first words with only your original sounds, then words with one similar sound, then two, and so on, each from fewest to most extra sounds. Each group is sorted from the most to the least common word. The number beside each word is its rank by how often it's used (#1 is the most common), and “common words” are ones used at least once per million words. Click ? on a word to see its definition.
Sounds are written in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), which uses one symbol per sound, however it's spelled. For example, the c in cat and the k in kit are both k, and th is either θ (thin) or ð (this).
A raised mark ˈ goes before the syllable with the main stress, and a lowered mark ˌ before a syllable with secondary stress: lettuce is /ˈlɛtəs/, and alligator is /ˈæləˌɡeɪtɚ/. On the sound buttons, the mark sits in the corner of the stressed vowel. The vowels ə and ɚ are unstressed, “reduced” vowels.
The similar sounds come from how sounds are made. Vowels differ in how high the tongue is (high i in eat, low ɑ in odd), where the tongue is (front i, back u in two), and whether the lips are rounded (rounded ɔ in ought, unrounded ɑ). Consonants come in pairs that differ only in whether the vocal cords vibrate: voiced b, voiceless p.
These symbols are for North American English, as in the dictionary; the example words may sound different in other accents.
Acknowledgements
- Pronunciations: the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which covers about 135,000 North American English words, including many names.
- Word frequencies: wordfreq (CC BY-SA 4.0).
- Dictionary words and the capitalization of names: the Hunspell en_US spelling dictionary, from SCOWL.
- Offensive words: profanity-list by David Sojevic (MIT).
- Definitions: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA).