Which to use
“devastate” is a verb and “devastated” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #45,881
- “devastate” frequency rank
- #10,838
- “devastated” frequency rank
- 56719
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | devastate | devastated |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | To ruin many or all things over a large area, such as most or all buildings of a city, or cities of a region, or trees of a forest. | Ruined, ravaged. |
Letter map: devastate vs devastated
Shared letters muted; letters that set devastate and devastated apart highlighted. Shared run: 9.
Part-of-speech tell for devastate / devastated
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: devastate is averb and devastatedanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “devastate” sits inside “devastated”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 56719, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
devastate is recorded at frequency rank #45,881, classified as averb, pronounced /ˈdɛv.ə.steɪt/. devastated is at rank #10,838, 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 56719, this pair ranks #124,215 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of devastate vs devastated
Shared letters: adestv. Private to "devastate": -. Private to "devastated": -.
"devastate" · 9 letters · shape CVCVCCVCV · "devastated" · 10 letters · shape CVCVCCVCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
- devastate ← ddevastate · deavstate · devasatte · devasstate · devastaet · devastatte · devasttae · devasttate
- devastated ← ddevastated · deavstated · devasatted · devasstated · devastaetd · devastatde · devastatedd · devastatted
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "devastate" and "devastated" mean the same thing in a sentence?
In ordinary English text, does "devastate" or "devastated" show up more?
Useful next steps
Pair "devastate" vs "devastated" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.
- Full dictionary entry for "devastate" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "devastated" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #124,215 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- 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 #124,215 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.