kentvspasteTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#13,409
“kent” frequency rank
#24,065
“paste” frequency rank
37474
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature kent paste
Definition Präteritum (simple past) des Verbs ken Paste

Letter map: kent vs paste

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

4 ch
kent
5 ch
paste

Part-of-speech tell for kent / paste

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: kent is averb and pasteanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 37474, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

kent is recorded at frequency rank #13,409, classified as averb, pronounced […]. paste is at rank #24,065, tagged as anoun, 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 37474, this pair ranks #1,589,275 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of kent vs paste

Shared letters: et. Private to "kent": kn. Private to "paste": aps.

"kent" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "paste" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • kenteknt · kentt · ketn · kkent · knet
  • pasteapste · paset · pastte · patse · ppaste · psate

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "kent" for "paste" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "kent" is a verb and "paste" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "kent" or "paste"?
"kent" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #13,409 in our German list, against #24,065 for "paste". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "kent" and "paste".

  • Full dictionary entry for "kent" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "paste" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,589,275 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "kent" and "paste" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "paste 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 #1,589,275 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