personvspesoTell them apart

Which to use

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

#257
“person” frequency rank
#29,034
“peso” frequency rank
29291
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature person peso
Definition An individual who has been granted personhood; usually a human being. A former unit of currency in Spain and Spain's colonies, worth 8 reales; the Spanish dollar.

Where the eye mixes person and peso

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. person runs 6 letters (CVCCVC) against peso's 4 (CVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
person
4 ch
peso

Why the eye confuses person with peso

A purely visual mix-up. person (/ˈpɜː.sən/) and peso (/ˈpeɪsəʊ/) 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 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 29291, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

person is recorded at frequency rank #257, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈpɜː.sən/. peso is at rank #29,034, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈpeɪsəʊ/.

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 29291, this pair ranks #364,180 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of person vs peso

Shared letters: eops. Private to "person": nr. Private to "peso": -.

"person" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC  ·  "peso" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • person ← eprson · perosn · perrson · persno · personn · persson · pesron · pperson
  • peso ← epso · peos · pesso · ppeso · pseo

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "person" for "peso" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (/ˈpɜː.sən/ versus /ˈpeɪsəʊ/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary English text, does "person" or "peso" show up more?
"person" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #257 in our English list, against #29,034 for "peso". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "person" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "peso" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #364,180 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "person" and "peso" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pecs vs peso". 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 #364,180 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