piecevspiesWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#975
“piece” frequency rank
#13,397
“pies” frequency rank
14372
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature piece pies
Definition A part of a larger whole, usually in such a form that it is able to be separated from other parts. plural of pie

Where the eye mixes piece and pies

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

5 ch
piece
4 ch
pies

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

A purely visual mix-up. piece (/piːs/) and pies (/paɪz/) 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 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 14372, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

piece is recorded at frequency rank #975, classified as anoun, pronounced /piːs/. pies is at rank #13,397, tagged as anoun, pronounced /paɪz/.

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 14372, this pair ranks #470,443 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of piece vs pies

Shared letters: eip. Private to "piece": c. Private to "pies": s.

"piece" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV  ·  "pies" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • pieceipece · peice · picee · piecce · pieec · ppiece
  • piesipes · peis · piess · pise

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "piece" and "pies" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (/piːs/ versus /paɪz/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "piece" or "pies"?
"piece" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #975 in our English list, against #13,397 for "pies". 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 "piece" and "pies". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "piece" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "pies" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #470,443 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "piece" and "pies" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pies vs plied". 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

PlainSpell is a reference corpus, not spelling advice. Verify unusual forms in context.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list