English homophones

Mach/marc/mark

"Mach" is a name; "marc" is a noun - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #30 of 1,007 English groups.

Data vintage 2026-09-03

Grammar picks the spelling

Same sound, different grammar: "Mach" arrives as a name, while "marc" is a noun. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.

Spelling pairs in this cluster

Shared stem "ma" then splits - "Mach" (4 letters) vs "marc" (4).
Shared stem "ma" then splits - "Mach" (4 letters) vs "mark" (4).
Single-letter fork: "marc" keeps c, "mark" writes k at letter 4.

Orthographic DNA of this cluster

Shared letters across Mach, marc, mark: am. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.

Mach
4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVCC
Inventory achm · private ch
marc
4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVCC
Inventory acmr · private cr
mark
4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVCC
Inventory akmr · private kr

Pick the spelling from the meaning

Write "Mach" when you mean: A surname from Czech.
Write "marc" when you mean: The refuse matter that remains after fruit, particularly grapes, has been pressed.
Write "mark" when you mean: Boundary, land within a boundary.

Known mistypes of these spellings

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

Mach ← amch · macch · machh · mahc · mcah · mmach
marc ← amrc · macr · marcc · marrc · mmarc · mrac
mark ← amrk · makr · markk · marrk · mmark · mrak

Each spelling

Mach

name · /mɑːk/ · #20,990 frequency

A surname from Czech.

marc

noun · /mɑːk/ · #6,807 frequency

The refuse matter that remains after fruit, particularly grapes, has been pressed.

mark

noun · /mɑːk/ · #949 frequency

Boundary, land within a boundary.

Nearby English homophone groups

What to do next

You've reviewed the 3-spelling cluster (Mach, marc, mark). Here's where to go from here.

"mark" is the most frequent headword in this 3-spelling cluster (rank #949 in English). Full entry
Among English homophone groups, a cluster of 3 spellings ranks #30 by size (1,007 groups in this vintage). Corpus statistics
Explore a nearby 3-spelling cluster: maze · maize · Mays. 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.