Pedal - peddle

Pedal and peddle are exact homophones, both pronounced IPA: /'pɛd^əl/. Be sure to distinguish them in writing.

• Pedal is, first, an adjective derived from the Latin for 'a foot' (pēs, genitive pĕdis). It is used in scientific or medical language to mean "of the foot", "to do with the foot". Then it came to be used as a noun, for a lever operated by the foot. This can be seen in one of its most common uses, to mean the part of a bicycle on which the cyclist puts the foot, and which drives the bike. (This is why a human-powered bicycle is sometimes called a pedal bike.)

By an obvious development, 'to pedal' came to be used as the verb to describe what the cyclist does - to turn the wheels of the bicycle round by pushing on the pedals. It may help some people to remember the spelling of this meaning to think of the word pedalo - the name of a kind of 'play' boat in which a paddle wheel is turned by someone's feet pressing on pedals. Pedalos are found at the seaside and in parks.

• • The person who uses pedals - the agent noun - is a pedaller. This word is perhaps most used in sports reports of cycle races and such contexts. Note also that the addition of inflections to the verb give pedalled (this is one of the 117 mis-spellings listed as 'Common difficulties' in the section on 'Spelling' within 'Writing' in UEfAP) and pedalling.

• 'To peddle', on the other hand, is a rather old-fashioned word. It is a verb that describes a rather old-fashioned activity - a way of selling things. Originally it meant "to sell while walking around", or "to sell by knocking on different doors and offering goods for sale". It can be used nowadays loosely to mean any kind of selling - though the implication is usually that it is selling in some not quite respectable way, for example "Since he lost his job, he has been peddling his skills with increasing desperation", or "When he's out of jail, he peddles drugs."

• The agent-noun pedlar (notice the different spelling) is rarely used in any modern context. It means 'the sort of person who travels the countryside with a pack of things to sell, peddling them from door to door'.