pickedvspittedWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: picked is a verb, pitted is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“picked” is a verb and “pitted” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#1,956
“picked” frequency rank
#23,631
“pitted” frequency rank
25587
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature picked pitted
Definition simple past and past participle of pick Having a surface marked by pits; pockmarked or alveolate.

Letter map: picked vs pitted

Shared letters muted; letters that set picked and pitted apart highlighted. Shared run: 4.

6 ch
picked
6 ch
pitted

Role in the sentence - picked and pitted

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: picked is averb and pittedanadjective. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 25587, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

picked is recorded at frequency rank #1,956, classified as averb, pronounced /pɪkt/. 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 25587, this pair ranks #393,153 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of picked vs pitted

Shared letters: deip. Private to "picked": ck. Private to "pitted": t.

"picked" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC  ·  "pitted" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • pickedipcked · pciked · piccked · picekd · pickde · pickedd · pickked · pikced
  • pittediptted · pited · pitetd · pittde · pittedd · ppitted · ptited

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "picked" and "pitted" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "picked" is a verb and "pitted" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "picked" or "pitted" show up more?
"picked" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,956 in our English list, against #23,631 for "pitted". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

You've compared "picked" and "pitted". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "picked" 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 #393,153 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "picked" and "pitted" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pinter vs pitted". 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 #393,153 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