cardedvscasedWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#39,234
“carded” frequency rank
#48,121
“cased” frequency rank
87355
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

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

Letter map: carded vs cased

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

6 ch
carded
5 ch
cased

Grammar separator: carded vs cased

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: carded is anadjective and casedaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 87355, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

carded is recorded at frequency rank #39,234, classified as anadj. cased is at rank #48,121, tagged as averb, pronounced /keɪst/.

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 87355, this pair ranks #7,717 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of carded vs cased

Shared letters: acde. Private to "carded": r. Private to "cased": s.

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

Known mistypes of this pair

  • carded ← acrded · cadred · cardde · cardded · cardedd · carrded · ccarded · craded
  • cased ← acsed · caesd · casde · casedd · cassed · ccased · csaed

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "carded" for "cased" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "carded" is an adjective and "cased" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "carded" or "cased"?
"carded" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #39,234 in our English list, against #48,121 for "cased". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pair "carded" vs "cased" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "carded" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "cased" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #7,717 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "carded" and "cased" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cased vs clasped". 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 #7,717 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