dedvsdevoWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: ded is a noun, devo is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“ded” is a noun and “devo” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#39,281
“ded” frequency rank
#39,776
“devo” frequency rank
79057
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ded devo
Definition A person who inflicts dedovshchina (a kind of hazing ritual). Devastated.

Letter map: ded vs devo

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

3 ch
ded
4 ch
devo

Part-of-speech tell for ded / devo

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: ded is anoun and devoanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 79057, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ded is recorded at frequency rank #39,281, classified as anoun. devo is at rank #39,776, tagged as anadj, pronounced /ˈdɛvoʊ/.

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 79057, this pair ranks #23,039 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of ded vs devo

Shared letters: de. Private to "ded": -. Private to "devo": ov.

"ded" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "devo" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • devo ← ddevo · deov · devvo · dveo · edvo

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "ded" for "devo" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "ded" is a noun and "devo" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "ded" or "devo" show up more?
"ded" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #39,281 in our English list, against #39,776 for "devo". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "ded" and "devo".

  • Full dictionary entry for "ded" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "devo" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #23,039 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ded" and "devo" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ded vs dox". 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 #23,039 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