CEAvscedeWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#43,561
“CEA” frequency rank
#34,425
“cede” frequency rank
77986
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature CEA cede
Definition Initialism of Centre for Effective Altruism. To give up; yield to another.

Letter map: CEA vs cede

Shared letters muted; letters that set CEA and cede apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. CEA runs 3 letters (CVV) against cede's 4 (CVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

3 ch
CEA
4 ch
cede

Role in the sentence - CEA and cede

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: CEA is aname and cedeaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 77986, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

CEA is recorded at frequency rank #43,561, classified as aname. cede is at rank #34,425, tagged as averb, pronounced /siːd/.

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 77986, this pair ranks #25,786 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of CEA vs cede

Shared letters: ce. Private to "CEA": a. Private to "cede": d.

"CEA" · 3 letters · shape CVV  ·  "cede" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • cede ← ccede · cdee · ceed · ecde

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "CEA" and "cede" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "CEA" is a name and "cede" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "CEA" or "cede" show up more?
"cede" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #34,425 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.

Useful next steps

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "CEA" and "cede".

  • Full dictionary entry for "CEA" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "cede" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #25,786 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "CEA" and "cede" 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 #25,786 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