English homophones

healed/heeled

"healed" (#11,896 written frequency) beats "heeled" (#33,270) in this 2-word /hiːld/ cluster. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.

Data vintage

Frequency splits the cluster

These 2 spellings keep the same /hiːld/ reading, but written frequency splits them hard: "healed" leads at #11,896, with "heeled" trailing at #33,270.

Spelling pairs in this cluster

  • Shared stem "he" then splits - "healed" (6 letters) vs "heeled" (6).

Orthographic DNA of this cluster

Shared letters across healed, heeled: dehl. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.

  • healed

    6 letters · 3 vowels · shape CVVCVC

    Inventory adehl · private a

  • heeled

    6 letters · 3 vowels · shape CVVCVC

    Inventory dehl · no private letters vs siblings

Pick the spelling from the meaning

  • Write "healed" when you mean: simple past and past participle of heal
  • Write "heeled" when you mean: simple past and past participle of heel

Known mistypes of these spellings

Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.

  • healedehaled · haeled · heaeld · healde · healedd · healled
  • heeledeheled · heeeld · heelde · heeledd · heelled · heled

Each spelling

healed

verb · /hiːld/ · #11,896 frequency

simple past and past participle of heal

heeled

verb · /hiːld/ · #33,270 frequency

simple past and past participle of heel

Nearby English homophone groups

What to do next

You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (healed, heeled). Here's where to go from here.

  • "healed" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #11,896 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: hmm · hmmm. Nearby cluster
  • Each spelling in "healed, heeled" has its own headword page with definition, IPA, and misspelling variants. First entry

PlainSpell is a reference corpus, not spelling advice. Verify unusual forms in context.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list