pacervspacesTell them apart

Which to use

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

#41,297
“pacer” frequency rank
#23,348
“paces” frequency rank
64645
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pacer paces
Definition One who paces. plural of pace

Letter map: pacer vs paces

Shared letters muted; letters that set pacer and paces apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. pacer and paces follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

5 ch
pacer
5 ch
paces

Spelling & dictionary notes on pacer vs paces

pacer and paces 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 a single letter - r in “pacer” becomes s in “paces”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 64645, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

pacer is recorded at frequency rank #41,297, classified as anoun. paces is at rank #23,348, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈpeɪsɪz/.

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 64645, this pair ranks #76,677 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of pacer vs paces

Shared letters: acep. Private to "pacer": r. Private to "paces": s.

"pacer" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "paces" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • pacer ← apcer · paccer · pacerr · pacre · paecr · pcaer · ppacer
  • paces ← apces · pacces · pacess · pacse · paecs · pcaes · ppaces

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "pacer" and "paces" be used interchangeably?
No. They differ by a single letter - r in “pacer” becomes s in “paces”, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
In ordinary English text, does "pacer" or "paces" show up more?
"paces" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #23,348 in our English list, against #41,297 for "pacer". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

You've compared "pacer" and "paces". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "pacer" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "paces" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #76,677 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pacer" and "paces" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pacer vs poacher". 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 #76,677 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