pastyvspostsWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: pasty is a adjective, posts is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“pasty” is an adjective and “posts” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#33,783
“pasty” frequency rank
#2,265
“posts” frequency rank
36048
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pasty posts
Definition Like paste, sticky. plural of post

Where the eye mixes pasty and posts

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

5 ch
pasty
5 ch
posts

Look-alike desk: pasty vs posts

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: pasty is /ˈpeɪsti/ while posts is /pəʊsts/. 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 (adjective vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 36048, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

pasty is recorded at frequency rank #33,783, classified as anadj, pronounced /ˈpeɪsti/. posts is at rank #2,265, tagged as anoun, pronounced /pəʊsts/.

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 36048, this pair ranks #306,632 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of pasty vs posts

Shared letters: pst. Private to "pasty": ay. Private to "posts": o.

"pasty" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "posts" · 5 letters · shape CVCCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • pastyapsty · passty · pastty · pastyy · pasyt · ppasty · psaty
  • postsopsts · possts · postss · postts · potss · pposts · psots

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "pasty" and "posts" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "pasty" is an adjective and "posts" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "pasty" or "posts"?
"posts" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,265 in our English list, against #33,783 for "pasty". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Eye-level mix-up between "pasty" and "posts" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "pasty" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "posts" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #306,632 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pasty" and "posts" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pappy vs pasty". 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 #306,632 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