buttedvsbuttonedWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#48,109
“butted” frequency rank
#36,472
“buttoned” frequency rank
84581
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature butted buttoned
Definition simple past and past participle of butt Having a button or buttons.

Letter map: butted vs buttoned

Shared letters muted; letters that set butted and buttoned apart highlighted. Shared run: 6.

6 ch
butted
8 ch
buttoned

Role in the sentence - butted and buttoned

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: butted is averb and buttonedanadjective. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 84581, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

butted is recorded at frequency rank #48,109, classified as averb, pronounced /ˈbʌtɪd/. buttoned is at rank #36,472, 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 84581, this pair ranks #11,824 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of butted vs buttoned

Shared letters: bdetu. Private to "butted": -. Private to "buttoned": no.

"butted" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC  ·  "buttoned" · 8 letters · shape CVCCVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • buttedbbutted · btuted · buted · butetd · buttde · buttedd · ubtted
  • buttonedbbuttoned · btutoned · butoned · butotned · buttnoed · buttoend · buttonde · buttonedd

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "butted" for "buttoned" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "butted" is a verb and "buttoned" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "butted" vs "buttoned" - which ranks higher?
"buttoned" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #36,472 in our English list, against #48,109 for "butted". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

You've compared "butted" and "buttoned". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "butted" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "buttoned" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #11,824 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "butted" and "buttoned" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "buoyed vs butted". 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 #11,824 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