English homophones
leach/leech
"leach" (#20,983 written frequency) beats "leech" (#23,327) in this 2-word /liːt͡ʃ/ cluster. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Frequency splits the cluster
These 2 spellings keep the same /liːt͡ʃ/ reading, but written frequency splits them hard: "leach" leads at #20,983, with "leech" trailing at #23,327.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "le" then splits - "leach" (5 letters) vs "leech" (5).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across leach, leech: cehl. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
leach
5 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVVCC
Inventory acehl · private a
leech
5 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVVCC
Inventory cehl · no private letters vs siblings
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "leach" when you mean: A quantity of wood ashes, through which water passes, and thus imbibes the alkali.
- Write "leech" when you mean: An aquatic blood-sucking annelid of subclass Hirudinea, especially Hirudo medicinalis.
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 (leach, leech). Here's where to go from here.
- "leach" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #20,983 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: law · lore. Nearby cluster
- Each spelling in "leach, leech" 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.