Which to use
“accelerate” is a verb and “accelerated” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #11,829
- “accelerate” frequency rank
- #10,320
- “accelerated” frequency rank
- 22149
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | accelerate | accelerated |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | To cause to move faster; to quicken the motion of; to add to the speed of. | Moving or progressing faster than is usual. |
Letter map: accelerate vs accelerated
Shared letters muted; letters that set accelerate and accelerated apart highlighted. Shared run: 10.
Role in the sentence - accelerate and accelerated
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: accelerate is averb and acceleratedanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “accelerate” sits inside “accelerated”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 22149, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
accelerate is recorded at frequency rank #11,829, classified as averb, pronounced /əkˈsɛl.əˌɹeɪt/. accelerated is at rank #10,320, 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 22149, this pair ranks #418,705 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of accelerate vs accelerated
Shared letters: acelrt. Private to "accelerate": -. Private to "accelerated": d.
"accelerate" · 10 letters · shape VCCVCVCVCV · "accelerated" · 11 letters · shape VCCVCVCVCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
- accelerate ← acceelrate · accelearte · acceleraet · acceleratte · accelerrate · accelertae · accellerate · accelreate
- accelerated ← acceelrated · accelearted · acceleraetd · acceleratde · acceleratedd · acceleratted · accelerrated · accelertaed
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "accelerate" for "accelerated" ever safe?
Which is more common, "accelerate" or "accelerated"?
Useful next steps
Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "accelerate" and "accelerated".
- Full dictionary entry for "accelerate" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "accelerated" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #418,705 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "accelerate" and "accelerated" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "accelerate vs accelerator". 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 #418,705 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.