English homophones
tech/tek
"tech" is a noun; "tek" 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: "tech" arrives as a noun, while "tek" is a verb. Once the sentence role is fixed, only one spelling fits.
Spelling pairs in this cluster
- Shared stem "te" then splits - "tech" (4 letters) vs "tek" (3).
Orthographic DNA of this cluster
Shared letters across tech, tek: et. Private letters are the ones only one spelling owns: the eye's fastest tell once sound is out of the picture.
tech
4 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVCC
Inventory ceht · private ch
tek
3 letters · 1 vowels · shape CVC
Inventory ekt · private k
Pick the spelling from the meaning
- Write "tech" when you mean: Technology.
- Write "tek" when you mean: Pronunciation spelling of take, representing dialectal English.
Known mistypes of these spellings
Edit-distance variants recorded against this cluster: useful when a search or OCR feed lands on the wrong form.
- tech ← tceh · tecch · techh · tehc · ttech
Each spelling
Nearby English homophone groups
What to do next
You've reviewed the 2-spelling cluster (tech, tek). Here's where to go from here.
- "tech" is the most frequent headword in this 2-spelling cluster (rank #2,092 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: thrown · throne. 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.