attendedvsattendeeWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#3,146
“attended” frequency rank
#40,566
“attendee” frequency rank
43712
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature attended attendee
Definition simple past and past participle of attend A person who is in attendance or in the audience of an event.

Letter map: attended vs attendee

Shared letters muted; letters that set attended and attendee apart highlighted. Shared run: 7. attended (VCCVCCVC) and attendee (VCCVCCVV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

8 ch
attended
8 ch
attendee

Part-of-speech tell for attended / attendee

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: attended is averb and attendeeanoun. On the page they differ by a single letter - d in “attended” becomes e in “attendee”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 43712, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

attended is recorded at frequency rank #3,146, classified as averb, pronounced /əˈtɛndɪd/. 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 43712, this pair ranks #237,360 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of attended vs attendee

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

"attended" · 8 letters · shape VCCVCCVC  ·  "attendee" · 8 letters · shape VCCVCCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • attended ← atended · atetnded · attedned · attendde · attendded · attendedd · attenedd · attennded
  • attendee ← atendee · atetndee · attednee · attenddee · attende · attenede · attenndee · attnedee

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "attended" for "attendee" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "attended" is a verb and "attendee" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "attended" or "attendee" show up more?
"attended" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,146 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

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "attended" and "attendee".

  • Full dictionary entry for "attended" 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 #237,360 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "attended" 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 #237,360 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