English homophones
ducked/duct
"ducked" is a verb; "duct" is a noun - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Grammar picks the spelling
Same sound, different grammar: "ducked" arrives as a verb, while "duct" is a noun. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "duc" then splits - "ducked" (6 letters) vs "duct" (4).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across ducked, duct: cdu. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
ducked
6 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVCCVC
Inventory cdeku · private ek
duct
4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVCC
Inventory cdtu · private t
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "ducked" when you mean: simple past and past participle of duck
- Write "duct" when you mean: A pipe, tube or canal which carries gas or liquid from one place to another.
Known mistypes of these spellings
Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.
Each spelling
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (ducked, duct). Here's where to go from here.
- "duct" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #13,330 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: damn · dam. 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.