casedvsclawedWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#48,121
“cased” frequency rank
#34,433
“clawed” frequency rank
82554
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cased clawed
Definition simple past and past participle of case having claws (of animals)

Letter map: cased vs clawed

Shared letters muted; letters that set cased and clawed apart highlighted. Shared run: 4.

5 ch
cased
6 ch
clawed

Grammar separator: cased vs clawed

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: cased is averb and clawedanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 82554, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cased is recorded at frequency rank #48,121, classified as averb, pronounced /keɪst/. clawed is at rank #34,433, 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 82554, this pair ranks #15,531 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of cased vs clawed

Shared letters: acde. Private to "cased": s. Private to "clawed": lw.

"cased" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "clawed" · 6 letters · shape CCVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • casedacsed · caesd · casde · casedd · cassed · ccased · csaed
  • clawedcalwed · cclawed · claewd · clawde · clawedd · clawwed · cllawed · clwaed

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "cased" and "clawed" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "cased" is a verb and "clawed" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "cased" or "clawed" show up more?
"clawed" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #34,433 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.

What to do next

You've compared "cased" and "clawed". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "cased" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "clawed" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #15,531 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cased" and "clawed" 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 #15,531 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