English homophones
pedal/peddle
"pedal" is a noun; "peddle" is a verb - grammar picks the spelling, not sound. Size rank #133 of 1,007 English groups.
Data vintage
Grammar picks the spelling
Same sound, different grammar: "pedal" arrives as a noun, while "peddle" is a verb. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "ped" then splits - "pedal" (5 letters) vs "peddle" (6).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across pedal, peddle: delp. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
pedal
5 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVCVC
Inventory adelp · private a
peddle
6 letters · 2 vowels · shape CVCCCV
Inventory delp · no private letters vs siblings
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "pedal" when you mean: A lever operated by one's foot that is used to control or power a machine or mechanism, such as a bicycle or piano.
- Write "peddle" when you mean: To sell things, especially door to door or in insignificant quantities.
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 (pedal, peddle). Here's where to go from here.
- "pedal" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #12,294 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: pit · Pitt. 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.