pecvspieceTell them apart

Which to use

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

#47,251
“pec” frequency rank
#975
“piece” frequency rank
48226
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pec piece
Definition The pectoralis major muscle. A part of a larger whole, usually in such a form that it is able to be separated from other parts.

Letter map: pec vs piece

Shared letters muted; letters that set pec and piece apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. pec runs 3 letters (CVC) against piece's 5 (CVVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

3 ch
pec
5 ch
piece

Spelling & dictionary notes on pec vs piece

pec and piece are indexed as a confusable English pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 48226, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

pec is recorded at frequency rank #47,251, classified as anoun. piece is at rank #975, tagged as anoun, pronounced /piːs/.

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 48226, this pair ranks #195,072 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of pec vs piece

Shared letters: cep. Private to "pec": -. Private to "piece": i.

"pec" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "piece" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • piece ← ipece · peice · picee · piecce · pieec · ppiece

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "pec" and "piece" be used interchangeably?
No. They differ by 2 letter(s) in length, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
Which is more common, "pec" or "piece"?
"piece" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #975 in our English list, against #47,251 for "pec". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

You've compared "pec" and "piece". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "pec" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "piece" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #195,072 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pec" and "piece" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pec vs PPA". 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 #195,072 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