catesvscomesTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#48,123
“cates” frequency rank
#432
“comes” frequency rank
48555
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cates comes
Definition Provisions; food; viands; especially, luxurious food; delicacies; dainties. third-person singular simple present indicative of come

Letter map: cates vs comes

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

5 ch
cates
5 ch
comes

Grammar separator: cates vs comes

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: cates is anoun and comesaverb. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 48555, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cates is recorded at frequency rank #48,123, classified as anoun. comes is at rank #432, tagged as averb, pronounced /kʌmz/.

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 48555, this pair ranks #191,937 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of cates vs comes

Shared letters: ces. Private to "cates": at. Private to "comes": mo.

"cates" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "comes" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • catesactes · caets · catess · cattes · ccates · ctaes
  • comesccomes · cmoes · coems · comess · commes · comse · ocmes

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "cates" and "comes" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "cates" is a noun and "comes" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "cates" or "comes"?
"comes" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #432 in our English list, against #48,123 for "cates". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Pair "cates" vs "comes" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "cates" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "comes" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #191,937 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cates" and "comes" 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 #191,937 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