pinevspriceWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#6,080
“pine” frequency rank
#592
“price” frequency rank
6672
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pine price
Definition Any coniferous tree of the genus Pinus. The cost required to gain possession of something.

Where the eye mixes pine and price

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

4 ch
pine
5 ch
price

Look-alike desk: pine vs price

A purely visual mix-up. pine (/paɪn/) and price (/pɹaɪs/) 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 6672, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

pine is recorded at frequency rank #6,080, classified as anoun, pronounced /paɪn/. price is at rank #592, tagged as anoun, pronounced /pɹaɪs/.

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 6672, this pair ranks #510,468 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of pine vs price

Shared letters: eip. Private to "pine": n. Private to "price": cr.

"pine" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "price" · 5 letters · shape CCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • pineipne · pien · pinne · pnie · ppine
  • pricepirce · pprice · prcie · pricce · priec · prrice · rpice

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "pine" for "price" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (/paɪn/ versus /pɹaɪs/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary English text, does "pine" or "price" show up more?
"price" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #592 in our English list, against #6,080 for "pine". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "pine" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "price" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #510,468 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pine" and "price" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pine vs Pyke". 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 #510,468 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