incensedvsincreasedWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: incensed is a adjective, increased is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#37,042
“incensed” frequency rank
#1,308
“increased” frequency rank
38350
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature incensed increased
Definition Enraged; infuriated; spitefully or furiously angry. simple past and past participle of increase

Letter map: incensed vs increased

Shared letters muted; letters that set incensed and increased apart highlighted. Shared run: 7. incensed runs 8 letters (VCCVCCVC) against increased's 9 (VCCCVVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

8 ch
incensed
9 ch
increased

Part-of-speech tell for incensed / increased

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: incensed is anadjective and increasedaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 38350, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

incensed is recorded at frequency rank #37,042, classified as anadj. increased is at rank #1,308, tagged as averb, pronounced /ɪnˈkɹiːst/.

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 38350, this pair ranks #286,661 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of incensed vs increased

Shared letters: cdeins. Private to "incensed": -. Private to "increased": ar.

"incensed" · 8 letters · shape VCCVCCVC  ·  "increased" · 9 letters · shape VCCCVVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • incensed ← icnensed · inccensed · incenesd · incennsed · incensde · incensedd · incenssed · incesned
  • increased ← icnreased · inccreased · incerased · incraesed · increaesd · increasde · increasedd · increassed

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "incensed" and "increased" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "incensed" is an adjective and "increased" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "incensed" or "increased" show up more?
"increased" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,308 in our English list, against #37,042 for "incensed". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pair "incensed" vs "increased" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "incensed" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "increased" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #286,661 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "incensed" and "increased" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "incensed vs indented". 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 #286,661 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