8vs8thWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: 8 is a verb, 8th is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“8” is a verb and “8th” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#312
“8” frequency rank
#4,731
“8th” frequency rank
5043
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature 8 8th
Definition Abbreviation of ate. Abbreviation of eighth.

Letter map: 8 vs 8th

Shared letters muted; letters that set 8 and 8th apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

1 ch
8
3 ch
8th

Part-of-speech tell for 8 / 8th

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: 8 is averb and 8thanadjective. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “8” sits inside “8th”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 5043, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

8 is recorded at frequency rank #312, classified as averb, pronounced /eɪt/. 8th is at rank #4,731, tagged as anadj.

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 5043, this pair ranks #516,783 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of 8 vs 8th

Shared letters: none. Private to "8": -. Private to "8th": ht.

"8" · 0 letters · shape  ·  "8th" · 2 letters · shape CC

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "8" and "8th" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "8" is a verb and "8th" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "8" or "8th" show up more?
"8" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #312 in our English list, against #4,731 for "8th". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pair "8" vs "8th" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "8" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "8th" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #516,783 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "8" and "8th" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "8 vs ait". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #516,783 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list