CEAvsceaseWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: CEA is a name, cease is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“CEA” is a name and “cease” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#43,561
“CEA” frequency rank
#6,769
“cease” frequency rank
50330
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature CEA cease
Definition Initialism of Centre for Effective Altruism. To stop.

Letter map: CEA vs cease

Shared letters muted; letters that set CEA and cease apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

3 ch
CEA
5 ch
cease

Role in the sentence - CEA and cease

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: CEA is aname and ceaseaverb. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “CEA” sits inside “cease”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 50330, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

CEA is recorded at frequency rank #43,561, classified as aname. cease is at rank #6,769, tagged as averb, pronounced /sis/.

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 50330, this pair ranks #175,290 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of CEA vs cease

Shared letters: ace. Private to "CEA": -. Private to "cease": s.

"CEA" · 3 letters · shape CVV  ·  "cease" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • ceasecaese · ccease · ceaes · ceasse · cesae · ecase

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "CEA" and "cease" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "CEA" is a name and "cease" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "CEA" or "cease"?
"cease" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #6,769 in our English list, against #43,561 for "CEA". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Pair "CEA" vs "cease" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "CEA" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "cease" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #175,290 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "CEA" and "cease" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "CEA vs CGT". 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 #175,290 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