pastevspestoWhat's the difference?

Which to use

“paste” and “pesto” are a confusable German pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#24,065
“paste” frequency rank
#35,380
“pesto” frequency rank
59445
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature paste pesto
Definition Paste Pesto

Letter map: paste vs pesto

Shared letters muted; letters that set paste and pesto apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

5 ch
paste
5 ch
pesto

Spelling & dictionary notes on paste vs pesto

paste and pesto are indexed as a confusable German pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 59445, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

paste is recorded at frequency rank #24,065, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. pesto is at rank #35,380, tagged as anoun, pronounced [pɛsto].

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 59445, this pair ranks #824,255 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of paste vs pesto

Shared letters: epst. Private to "paste": a. Private to "pesto": o.

"paste" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "pesto" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • pasteapste · paset · pastte · patse · ppaste · psate
  • pestoepsto · pesot · pessto · pestto · petso · ppesto · pseto

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "paste" and "pesto" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
In ordinary German text, does "paste" or "pesto" show up more?
"paste" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #24,065 in our German list, against #35,380 for "pesto". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "paste" and "pesto". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "paste" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "pesto" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #824,255 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "paste" and "pesto" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pes vs pesto". 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 #824,255 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