Minimal pair

In linguistics, two words differing by only one unit of sound, or phoneme, are called a minimal pair. Minimal pairs are widely used in language teaching. In English, typical examples are:

• 'cat' and 'mat'
• 'fish' and 'wish'
• 'abortion' and 'apportion'
• 'parole' and 'patrol'

Spelling can disguise the fact of a minimal pair; some examples of this are:

• 'bane' and 'boon'
• 'league' and 'leak'
• 'do' and 'two'
• 'Evans' and 'heavens'
• 'mosque' and 'musk