partvsPerthWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: part is a noun, Perth is a name, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“part” is a noun and “Perth” is a name - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#162
“part” frequency rank
#7,957
“Perth” frequency rank
8119
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature part Perth
Definition A portion; a component. A city in Perth and Kinross council area, Scotland, historically in Perthshire.

Where the eye mixes part and Perth

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

4 ch
part
5 ch
Perth

Why the eye confuses part with Perth

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: part is /pɑːt/ while Perth is /pɜːθ/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs name), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 8119, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

part is recorded at frequency rank #162, classified as anoun, pronounced /pɑːt/. Perth is at rank #7,957, tagged as aname, pronounced /pɜːθ/.

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 8119, this pair ranks #504,039 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of part vs Perth

Shared letters: prt. Private to "part": a. Private to "Perth": eh.

"part" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "Perth" · 5 letters · shape CVCCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • partaprt · parrt · partt · patr · ppart
  • Pertheprth · perht · perrth · perthh · pertth · petrh · pperth · preth

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "part" and "Perth" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "part" is a noun and "Perth" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "part" or "Perth"?
"part" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #162 in our English list, against #7,957 for "Perth". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "part" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Perth" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #504,039 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "part" and "Perth" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pert vs Perth". 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 #504,039 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