Which to use
“passed” is a verb and “paste” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #1,281
- “passed” frequency rank
- #8,183
- “paste” frequency rank
- 9464
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | passed | paste |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | simple past and past participle of pass | A soft moist mixture, in particular: |
Where the eye mixes passed and paste
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.
Look-alike desk: passed vs paste
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: passed is /pɑːst/ while paste is /peɪst/. 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 (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 9464, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
passed is recorded at frequency rank #1,281, classified as averb, pronounced /pɑːst/. paste is at rank #8,183, tagged as anoun, pronounced /peɪst/.
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 9464, this pair ranks #497,274 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of passed vs paste
Shared letters: aeps. Private to "passed": d. Private to "paste": t.
"passed" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC · "paste" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "passed" and "paste" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Frequency check: "passed" vs "paste" - which ranks higher?
After this comparison
Eye-level mix-up between "passed" and "paste" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "passed" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "paste" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #497,274 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "passed" and "paste" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "paste vs pester". 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 #497,274 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.