earthvspaidWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: earth is a noun, paid is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“earth” is a noun and “paid” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#14,785
“earth” frequency rank
#44,122
“paid” frequency rank
58907
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature earth paid
Definition Erde, Erdball, Welt Präteritum (simple past) des Verbs pay

Letter map: earth vs paid

Shared letters muted; letters that set earth and paid apart highlighted. Shared run: 1. earth runs 5 letters (VVCCC) against paid's 4 (CVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
earth
4 ch
paid

Role in the sentence - earth and paid

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: earth is anoun and paidaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 58907, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

earth is recorded at frequency rank #14,785, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. paid is at rank #44,122, tagged as averb, pronounced […].

Glosses for this pair are partially populated in our dataset, but the full side-by-side definitions above should still guide you to the right choice.

With a confusion score of 58907, this pair ranks #844,783 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of earth vs paid

Shared letters: a. Private to "earth": ehrt. Private to "paid": dip.

"earth" · 5 letters · shape VVCCC  ·  "paid" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • earthaerth · earht · earrth · earthh · eartth · eatrh · erath
  • paidapid · padi · paidd · ppaid

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "earth" for "paid" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "earth" is a noun and "paid" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "earth" vs "paid" - which ranks higher?
"earth" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #14,785 in our German list, against #44,122 for "paid". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pair "earth" vs "paid" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "earth" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "paid" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #844,783 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "earth" and "paid" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "paid vs puzzles". Nearby pair
  • Recorded mistypes exist for at least one side of this pair, useful when a spell-checker or OCR lands on the wrong form. See mistypes

Confusion rank #844,783 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list