partvspratTell them apart

Which to use

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

#162
“part” frequency rank
#47,836
“prat” frequency rank
47998
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature part prat
Definition A portion; a component. A cunning or mischievous trick; a prank, a joke.

Where the eye mixes part and prat

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

4 ch
part
4 ch
prat

Why the eye confuses part with prat

A purely visual mix-up. part (/pɑːt/) and prat (/pɹat/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ only by swapping two adjacent letters (ar ↔ ra) - a transposition the eye reads straight past. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 47998, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

part is recorded at frequency rank #162, classified as anoun, pronounced /pɑːt/. prat is at rank #47,836, tagged as anoun, pronounced /pɹat/.

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 47998, this pair ranks #197,280 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of part vs prat

Shared letters: aprt. Private to "part": -. Private to "prat": -.

"part" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "prat" · 4 letters · shape CCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • partaprt · parrt · partt · patr · ppart
  • pratpprat · prrat · prta · rpat

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "part" for "prat" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (/pɑːt/ versus /pɹat/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "part" or "prat"?
"part" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #162 in our English list, against #47,836 for "prat". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "part" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "prat" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #197,280 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "part" and "prat" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "PPA vs prat". 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 #197,280 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