peasevsphaseWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#37,149
“pease” frequency rank
#2,306
“phase” frequency rank
39455
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pease phase
Definition Alternative form of pea (“common plant; its edible seed”). A distinguishable part of a sequence or cycle occurring over time.

Where the eye mixes pease and phase

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.

5 ch
pease
5 ch
phase

Look-alike desk: pease vs phase

A purely visual mix-up. pease (/piːz/) and phase (/feɪz/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by a single letter - e in “pease” becomes h in “phase”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 39455, 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/. phase is at rank #2,306, tagged as anoun, pronounced /feɪz/.

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 39455, this pair ranks #276,539 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of pease vs phase

Shared letters: aeps. Private to "pease": -. Private to "phase": h.

"pease" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV  ·  "phase" · 5 letters · shape CCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • peaseepase · paese · peaes · peasse · pesae · ppease
  • phasehpase · pahse · phaes · phasse · phhase · phsae · pphase

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "pease" and "phase" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (/piːz/ versus /feɪz/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "pease" vs "phase" - which ranks higher?
"phase" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,306 in our English list, against #37,149 for "pease". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Eye-level mix-up between "pease" and "phase" 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 "phase" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #276,539 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pease" and "phase" 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 #276,539 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