pagevspaidWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: page is a noun, paid is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“page” is a noun and “paid” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#791
“page” frequency rank
#792
“paid” frequency rank
1583
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature page paid
Definition One of the many pieces of paper bound together within a book or similar document. simple past and past participle of pay

Where the eye mixes page and paid

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

4 ch
page
4 ch
paid

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: page is /peɪd͡ʒ/ while paid is /peɪd/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 1583, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

page is recorded at frequency rank #791, classified as anoun, pronounced /peɪd͡ʒ/. paid is at rank #792, tagged as averb, pronounced /peɪd/.

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 1583, this pair ranks #527,118 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of page vs paid

Shared letters: ap. Private to "page": eg. Private to "paid": di.

"page" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "paid" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • pageapge · paeg · pagge · pgae · ppage
  • paidapid · padi · paidd · piad · ppaid

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "page" and "paid" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "page" is a noun and "paid" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "page" or "paid"?
"page" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #791 in our English list, against #792 for "paid". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list