pahvspaidWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#29,274
“pah” frequency rank
#44,122
“paid” frequency rank
73396
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pah paid
Definition Ausdruck für Geringschätzung oder Verachtung Präteritum (simple past) des Verbs pay

Letter map: pah vs paid

Shared letters muted; letters that set pah and paid apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. pah runs 3 letters (CVC) against paid's 4 (CVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

3 ch
pah
4 ch
paid

Part-of-speech tell for pah / paid

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: pah is anintj and paidaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 73396, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

pah is recorded at frequency rank #29,274, classified as anintj, pronounced [paː]. 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 73396, this pair ranks #361,548 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of pah vs paid

Shared letters: ap. Private to "pah": h. Private to "paid": di.

"pah" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "paid" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • paid ← apid · padi · paidd · ppaid

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "pah" and "paid" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "pah" is an intj and "paid" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "pah" vs "paid" - which ranks higher?
"pah" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #29,274 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.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "pah" 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 #361,548 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pah" 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 #361,548 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