English homophones
pail/pale
"pail" is a noun; "pale" is an adjective - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Grammar picks the spelling
Same sound, different grammar: "pail" arrives as a noun, while "pale" is an adjective. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "pa" then splits - "pail" (4 letters) vs "pale" (4).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across pail, pale: alp. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
pail
4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVVC
Inventory ailp · private i
pale
4 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVCV
Inventory aelp · private e
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "pail" when you mean: A vessel of wood, tin, plastic, etc., usually cylindrical and having a handle -- used especially for carrying liquids, for example water …
- Write "pale" when you mean: Light in color.
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 (pail, pale). Here's where to go from here.
- "pale" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #6,275 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: poo · Pooh. 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.