English homophones
packed/pact
"packed" is a verb; "pact" 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: "packed" arrives as a verb, while "pact" is a noun. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "pac" then splits - "packed" (6 letters) vs "pact" (4).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across packed, pact: acp. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
packed
6 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVCCVC
Inventory acdekp · private dek
pact
4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVCC
Inventory acpt · private t
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "packed" when you mean: simple past and past participle of pack
- Write "pact" when you mean: An agreement; a compact; a covenant.
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 (packed, pact). Here's where to go from here.
- "packed" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #4,257 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: Pearson · Pierson. 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.