English homophones

practice/practise

"practice" is a noun; "practise" 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: "practice" arrives as a noun, while "practise" is a verb. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.

Spelling pairs in this cluster

  • Shared stem "practi" then splits - "practice" (8 letters) vs "practise" (8).

Orthographic DNA of this cluster

Shared letters across practice, practise: aceiprt. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.

  • practice

    8 letters · 3 vowels · shape CCVCCVCV

    Inventory aceiprt · no private letters vs siblings

  • practise

    8 letters · 3 vowels · shape CCVCCVCV

    Inventory aceiprst · private s

Pick the spelling from the meaning

  • Write "practice" when you mean: Repetition of an activity to improve a skill.
  • Write "practise" when you mean: To repeat (an activity) as a way of improving one's skill in that activity.

Known mistypes of these spellings

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

  • practiceparctice · ppractice · pracctice · pracitce · practcie · practicce
  • practiseparctise · ppractise · pracctise · pracitse · practies · practisse

Each spelling

practice

noun · /ˈpɹæktɪs/ · #931 frequency

Repetition of an activity to improve a skill.

practise

verb · /ˈpɹæktɪs/ · #14,615 frequency

To repeat (an activity) as a way of improving one's skill in that activity.

Nearby English homophone groups

What to do next

You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (practice, practise). Here's where to go from here.

  • "practice" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #931 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: people's · peoples. 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.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list