cakedvscardedWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#41,542
“caked” frequency rank
#39,234
“carded” frequency rank
80776
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature caked carded
Definition simple past and past participle of cake Involving the disentangling of fibers with a carding device.

Letter map: caked vs carded

Shared letters muted; letters that set caked and carded apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. caked runs 5 letters (CVCVC) against carded's 6 (CVCCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
caked
6 ch
carded

Part-of-speech tell for caked / carded

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: caked is averb and cardedanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 80776, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

caked is recorded at frequency rank #41,542, classified as averb, pronounced /keɪkt/. carded is at rank #39,234, 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 80776, this pair ranks #19,093 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of caked vs carded

Shared letters: acde. Private to "caked": k. Private to "carded": r.

"caked" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "carded" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • caked ← acked · caekd · cakde · cakedd · cakked · ccaked · ckaed
  • carded ← acrded · cadred · cardde · cardded · cardedd · carrded · ccarded · craded

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "caked" and "carded" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "caked" is a verb and "carded" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "caked" or "carded" show up more?
"carded" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #39,234 in our English list, against #41,542 for "caked". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "caked" and "carded".

  • Full dictionary entry for "caked" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "carded" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #19,093 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "caked" and "carded" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "caked vs cates". 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 #19,093 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