Which to use
“head” is a noun and “headed” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #288
- “head” frequency rank
- #2,736
- “headed” frequency rank
- 3024
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | head | headed |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | The part of the body of an animal or human which contains the brain, mouth, and main sense organs. | Of a sheet of paper: having the sender's name, address, etc. preprinted at the top. |
Where the eye mixes head and headed
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: head is /ˈhɛd/ while headed is /ˈhɛdɪd/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “head” sits inside “headed”, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 3024, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
head is recorded at frequency rank #288, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈhɛd/. headed is at rank #2,736, tagged as anadj, pronounced /ˈhɛdɪd/.
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 3024, this pair ranks #523,346 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of head vs headed
Shared letters: adeh. Private to "head": -. Private to "headed": -.
"head" · 4 letters · shape CVVC · "headed" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVC