acedvsacesWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: aced is a verb, aces is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#46,285
“aced” frequency rank
#17,284
“aces” frequency rank
63569
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature aced aces
Definition simple past and past participle of ace plural of ace

Where the eye mixes aced and aces

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

4 ch
aced
4 ch
aces

Look-alike desk: aced vs aces

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: aced is /eɪst/ while aces is /ˈeɪ.sɪz/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by a single letter - d in “aced” becomes s in “aces”, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 63569, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

aced is recorded at frequency rank #46,285, classified as averb, pronounced /eɪst/. aces is at rank #17,284, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈeɪ.sɪz/.

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 63569, this pair ranks #82,247 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of aced vs aces

Shared letters: ace. Private to "aced": d. Private to "aces": s.

"aced" · 4 letters · shape VCVC  ·  "aces" · 4 letters · shape VCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • acedacced · acde · acedd · aecd · caed
  • acesaecs

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "aced" and "aces" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "aced" is a verb and "aces" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "aced" or "aces" show up more?
"aces" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #17,284 in our English list, against #46,285 for "aced". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Eye-level mix-up between "aced" and "aces" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "aced" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "aces" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #82,247 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "aced" and "aces" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "aced vs ake". 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 #82,247 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