earedvserasedTell them apart

Which to use

“eared” and “erased” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#35,271
“eared” frequency rank
#15,160
“erased” frequency rank
50431
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature eared erased
Definition Having ears (of a specified type). Having the appearance of being forcibly torn off, with parts left jagged or uneven, as distinguished from couped.

Letter map: eared vs erased

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

5 ch
eared
6 ch
erased

Spelling & dictionary notes on eared vs erased

eared and erased are indexed as a confusable English pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 50431, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

eared is recorded at frequency rank #35,271, classified as anadj, pronounced /ɪəd/. erased is at rank #15,160, 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 50431, this pair ranks #174,317 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of eared vs erased

Shared letters: ader. Private to "eared": -. Private to "erased": s.

"eared" · 5 letters · shape VVCVC  ·  "erased" · 6 letters · shape VCVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • eared ← aered · eaerd · earde · earedd · earred · eraed
  • erased ← earsed · eraesd · erasde · erasedd · erassed · errased · ersaed · reased

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "eared" for "erased" ever safe?
No. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
Frequency check: "eared" vs "erased" - which ranks higher?
"erased" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #15,160 in our English list, against #35,271 for "eared". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

You've compared "eared" and "erased". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "eared" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "erased" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #174,317 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "eared" and "erased" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "eared vs easel". 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 #174,317 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