peasevspeeveConfusable pair

Which to use

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

#37,149
“pease” frequency rank
#37,151
“peeve” frequency rank
74300
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pease peeve
Definition Alternative form of pea (“common plant; its edible seed”). An annoyance or grievance.

Where the eye mixes pease and peeve

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. pease and peeve follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

5 ch
pease
5 ch
peeve

Why the eye confuses pease with peeve

A purely visual mix-up. pease (/piːz/) and peeve (/piːv/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 74300, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

pease is recorded at frequency rank #37,149, classified as anoun, pronounced /piːz/. peeve is at rank #37,151, tagged as anoun, pronounced /piːv/.

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 74300, this pair ranks #36,801 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of pease vs peeve

Shared letters: ep. Private to "pease": as. Private to "peeve": v.

"pease" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV  ·  "peeve" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • pease ← epase · paese · peaes · peasse · pesae · ppease
  • peeve ← epeve · peeev · peevve · peve · pevee · ppeeve

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "pease" and "peeve" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (/piːz/ versus /piːv/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "pease" vs "peeve" - which ranks higher?
"pease" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #37,149 in our English list, against #37,151 for "peeve". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "pease" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "peeve" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #36,801 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pease" and "peeve" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pease vs pecs". 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 #36,801 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