passte vs paste, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#10,719
“passte” frequency rank: #24,065
“paste” frequency rank: 34784
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	passte	paste
Definition	1. Person Singular Indikativ Präteritum Aktiv des Verbs passen	Paste

Letter map: passte vs paste

Shared letters muted; letters that set passte and paste apart highlighted. Shared run: 5.

6 ch

passte

5 ch

paste

Role in the sentence - passte and paste

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: passte is averb and pasteanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 34784, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

passte is recorded at frequency rank #10,719, classified as averb, pronounced [ˈpastə]. 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 34784, this pair ranks #1,655,347 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of passte vs paste

Shared letters: aepst. Private to "passte": -. Private to "paste": -.

"passte" · 6 letters · shape CVCCCV · "paste" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

passte ← apsste · passet · passtte · pastse · paßte · ppasste · psaste
paste ← apste · paset · pastte · patse · ppaste · psate

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "passte" for "paste" ever safe?

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

In ordinary German text, does "passte" or "paste" show up more?

"passte" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #10,719 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.

After this comparison

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

Full dictionary entry for "passte" 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 #1,655,347 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"passte" 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 #1,655,347 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.