cates vs CES, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“cates” is a noun and “CES” is a name - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#48,123
“cates” frequency rank: #22,610
“CES” frequency rank: 70733
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	cates	CES
Definition	Provisions; food; viands; especially, luxurious food; delicacies; dainties.	Center for Employee Services.

Letter map: cates vs CES

Shared letters muted; letters that set cates and CES apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

5 ch

cates

3 ch

CES

Role in the sentence - cates and CES

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: cates is anoun and CESaname. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 70733, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cates is recorded at frequency rank #48,123, classified as anoun. CES is at rank #22,610, tagged as aname.

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 70733, this pair ranks #49,344 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of cates vs CES

Shared letters: ces. Private to "cates": at. Private to "CES": -.

"cates" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC · "CES" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

cates ← actes · caets · catess · cattes · ccates · ctaes

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "cates" for "CES" ever safe?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "cates" is a noun and "CES" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

Which is more common, "cates" or "CES"?

"CES" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #22,610 in our English list, against #48,123 for "cates". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "cates" and "CES". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "cates" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "CES" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #49,344 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"cates" and "CES" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cates vs catty". 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 #49,344 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.