Which to use
“patted” is a verb and “pitted” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #37,148
- “patted” frequency rank
- #23,631
- “pitted” frequency rank
- 60779
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | patted | pitted |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | simple past and past participle of pat | Having a surface marked by pits; pockmarked or alveolate. |
Letter map: patted vs pitted
Shared letters muted; letters that set patted and pitted apart highlighted. Shared run: 5. patted and pitted follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Part-of-speech tell for patted / pitted
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: patted is averb and pittedanadjective. On the page they differ by a single letter - a in “patted” becomes i in “pitted”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 60779, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
patted is recorded at frequency rank #37,148, classified as averb, pronounced /ˈpatɪd/. pitted is at rank #23,631, tagged as anadj.
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 60779, this pair ranks #98,116 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of patted vs pitted
Shared letters: dept. Private to "patted": a. Private to "pitted": i.
"patted" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC · "pitted" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "patted" for "pitted" ever safe?
Which is more common, "patted" or "pitted"?
Useful next steps
Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "patted" and "pitted".
- Full dictionary entry for "patted" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "pitted" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #98,116 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "patted" and "pitted" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pared vs patted". 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 #98,116 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.