attendvsattendeeWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#2,714
“attend” frequency rank
#40,566
“attendee” frequency rank
43280
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature attend attendee
Definition Senses relating to caring for or waiting on someone, or accompanying or being present. A person who is in attendance or in the audience of an event.

Letter map: attend vs attendee

Shared letters muted; letters that set attend and attendee apart highlighted. Shared run: 6. attend runs 6 letters (VCCVCC) against attendee's 8 (VCCVCCVV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
attend
8 ch
attendee

Part-of-speech tell for attend / attendee

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: attend is averb and attendeeanoun. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “attend” sits inside “attendee”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 43280, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

attend is recorded at frequency rank #2,714, classified as averb, pronounced /əˈtɛnd/. attendee is at rank #40,566, tagged as anoun.

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 43280, this pair ranks #241,524 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of attend vs attendee

Shared letters: adent. Private to "attend": -. Private to "attendee": -.

"attend" · 6 letters · shape VCCVCC  ·  "attendee" · 8 letters · shape VCCVCCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • attend ← atend · atetnd · attedn · attendd · attennd · attned · tatend
  • attendee ← atendee · atetndee · attednee · attenddee · attende · attenede · attenndee · attnedee

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "attend" for "attendee" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "attend" is a verb and "attendee" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "attend" vs "attendee" - which ranks higher?
"attend" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,714 in our English list, against #40,566 for "attendee". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

You've compared "attend" and "attendee". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "attend" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "attendee" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #241,524 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "attend" and "attendee" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "attendee vs attendees". 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 #241,524 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