painevspanesWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#23,349
“paine” frequency rank
#33,357
“panes” frequency rank
56706
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature paine panes
Definition Obsolete spelling of pain. plural of pane

Letter map: paine vs panes

Shared letters muted; letters that set paine and panes apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. paine (CVVCV) and panes (CVCVC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

5 ch
paine
5 ch
panes

Pair insight - paine / panes

paine and panes 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 share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 56706, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

paine is recorded at frequency rank #23,349, classified as anoun. panes is at rank #33,357, tagged as anoun, pronounced /peɪnz/.

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 56706, this pair ranks #124,310 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of paine vs panes

Shared letters: aenp. Private to "paine": i. Private to "panes": s.

"paine" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV  ·  "panes" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • paine ← apine · paien · painne · panie · piane · ppaine
  • panes ← apnes · paens · paness · pannes · panse · pnaes · ppanes

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "paine" for "panes" ever safe?
No. They share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
Frequency check: "paine" vs "panes" - which ranks higher?
"paine" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #23,349 in our English list, against #33,357 for "panes". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "paine" and "panes".

  • Full dictionary entry for "paine" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "panes" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #124,310 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "paine" and "panes" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Palos vs panes". 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 #124,310 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