In British English, cheque is the spelling for the paper instrument that tells a bank to pay someone; check covers everything else, from a safety inspection to the bill at a restaurant. Think of the que in cheque as matching the que in bank queue.
The core difference
Cheque is reserved for the bank payment slip; check is used for every other meaning of the word.
- cheque — a written instruction to a bank to pay a set sum: The landlord asked for a cheque instead of cash.
- check — an inspection, a verb meaning to verify, or the restaurant bill: Please do a spell check before submitting the report.
How to tell them apart
Both words share the same root, tracing back through Old French eschec to a Persian word for "king" used in chess to announce a threatened king. "Cheque" split off as the British spelling in the 1790s, partly by influence of "exchequer", while American English kept "check" for the payment slip too.
The mix-up mostly shows up when someone writing in British English defaults to the American "check" for the bank document out of habit, or leaves "cheque" in place for an inspection or a restaurant bill where it does not belong.
