camevscomsTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#294
“came” frequency rank
#48,668
“coms” frequency rank
48962
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature came coms
Definition simple past of come Combinations (underwear).

Letter map: came vs coms

Shared letters muted; letters that set came and coms apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. came (CVCV) and coms (CVCC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

4 ch
came
4 ch
coms

Grammar separator: came vs coms

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: came is averb and comsanoun. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 48962, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

came is recorded at frequency rank #294, classified as averb, pronounced /keɪm/. coms is at rank #48,668, 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 48962, this pair ranks #188,147 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of came vs coms

Shared letters: cm. Private to "came": ae. Private to "coms": os.

"came" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "coms" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • came ← caem · camme · ccame · cmae
  • coms ← ccoms · comms · comss · cosm · ocms

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "came" for "coms" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "came" is a verb and "coms" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "came" vs "coms" - which ranks higher?
"came" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #294 in our English list, against #48,668 for "coms". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "came" and "coms".

  • Full dictionary entry for "came" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "coms" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #188,147 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "came" and "coms" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cami vs coms". 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 #188,147 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