Cast or caste?
cast is a verb meaning “To move, or be moved, away”; caste is a noun meaning “Any of the hereditary social classes and subclasses of South Asian societies or…”. Use cast as a verb and caste as a noun (cast is also a noun: “An act of throwing”). They sound the same (/kɑːst/). In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) cast is about 15 times as common as caste.
What is the difference between cast and caste?
| cast | caste | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | verb, noun, adjective, suffix | noun |
| Meaning | To move, or be moved, away To throw An act of throwing | Any of the hereditary social classes and subclasses of South Asian societies or similar found historically in other cultures A separate and fixed order or class of persons in society who chiefly associate with each other |
| Example | The area near the stream was covered with little bubbly worm casts | In beehives, most bees belong to the worker caste |
| Forms | casts, casting | castes |
| Pronunciation | /kɑːst/ /kast/ /kæst/ | /kɑːst/ /kast/ /kæst/ |
| In writing | 62 times per million words | 4.0 times per million words |
Sources: cast and caste in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of cast and caste
cast
- 1
To move, or be moved, away
- 2
An act of throwing
- 3
Of an animal, such as a horse or sheep: Lying in a position from which it cannot rise on its own
- 4
Forming words for audiovisual content distributed to an audience, usually in a manner denoted by the word stem
- 5
To throw
- 6
The number rolled on a die when it is thrown
- 7
To throw forward (a fishing line, net etc.) into the sea
- 8
An instance of throwing out a fishing line
caste
- 1
Any of the hereditary social classes and subclasses of South Asian societies or similar found historically in other cultures
- 2
A separate and fixed order or class of persons in society who chiefly associate with each other
- 3
The division of society into castes; the caste system
- 4
A class of polymorphous eusocial insects of a particular size and function within a colony
In beehives, most bees belong to the worker caste
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, cast or caste?
cast appears 62 times per million words; caste 4.0 times per million words.
cast 62 times per million wordscaste 4.0 times per million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search cast vs caste?
“cast vs caste” is searched about 70 times a month on Google and 10 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“caste vs cast”, “cast or caste”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.