Pack vs paid, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#5,405
“Pack” frequency rank: #44,122
“paid” frequency rank: 49527
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	Pack	paid
Definition	heruntergekommene, (teils kriminelle) Menschen; Gesindel	Präteritum (simple past) des Verbs pay

Letter map: Pack vs paid

Shared letters muted; letters that set Pack and paid apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch

Pack

4 ch

paid

Part-of-speech tell for Pack / paid

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: Pack is anoun and paidaverb. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 49527, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Pack is recorded at frequency rank #5,405, classified as anoun, pronounced [pak]. 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 49527, this pair ranks #1,208,181 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of Pack vs paid

Shared letters: ap. Private to "Pack": ck. Private to "paid": di.

"Pack" · 4 letters · shape CVCC · "paid" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

Pack ← apck · pacck · packk · pakc · pcak · ppack
paid ← apid · padi · paidd · ppaid

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "Pack" and "paid" be used interchangeably?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Pack" is a noun and "paid" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

In ordinary German text, does "Pack" or "paid" show up more?

"Pack" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #5,405 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.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "Pack" and "paid".

Full dictionary entry for "Pack" 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 #1,208,181 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"Pack" 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 #1,208,181 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.