coatedvscopedWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: coated is a verb, coped is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“coated” is a verb and “coped” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#11,358
“coated” frequency rank
#45,291
“coped” frequency rank
56649
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature coated coped
Definition simple past and past participle of coat Clad in a cope.

Letter map: coated vs coped

Shared letters muted; letters that set coated and coped apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. coated runs 6 letters (CVVCVC) against coped's 5 (CVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
coated
5 ch
coped

Grammar separator: coated vs coped

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: coated is averb and copedanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 56649, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

coated is recorded at frequency rank #11,358, classified as averb, pronounced /ˈkəʊtɪd/. coped is at rank #45,291, tagged as anadj.

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 56649, this pair ranks #124,735 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of coated vs coped

Shared letters: cdeo. Private to "coated": at. Private to "coped": p.

"coated" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVC  ·  "coped" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • coated ← caoted · ccoated · coaetd · coatde · coatedd · coatted · cotaed · ocated
  • coped ← ccoped · coepd · copde · copedd · cpoed · ocped

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "coated" for "coped" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "coated" is a verb and "coped" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "coated" vs "coped" - which ranks higher?
"coated" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #11,358 in our English list, against #45,291 for "coped". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pair "coated" vs "coped" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "coated" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "coped" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #124,735 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "coated" and "coped" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "coped vs cower". 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 #124,735 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