pittedvsPittsWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: pitted is a adjective, Pitts is a name, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#23,631
“pitted” frequency rank
#33,365
“Pitts” frequency rank
56996
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pitted Pitts
Definition Having a surface marked by pits; pockmarked or alveolate. A surname.

Letter map: pitted vs Pitts

Shared letters muted; letters that set pitted and Pitts apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. pitted runs 6 letters (CVCCVC) against Pitts's 5 (CVCCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
pitted
5 ch
Pitts

Part-of-speech tell for pitted / Pitts

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: pitted is anadjective and Pittsaname. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 56996, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

pitted is recorded at frequency rank #23,631, classified as anadj. Pitts is at rank #33,365, tagged as aname, pronounced /pɪts/.

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 56996, this pair ranks #122,299 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of pitted vs Pitts

Shared letters: ipt. Private to "pitted": de. Private to "Pitts": s.

"pitted" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC  ·  "Pitts" · 5 letters · shape CVCCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • pitted ← iptted · pited · pitetd · pittde · pittedd · ppitted · ptited
  • Pitts ← iptts · pitst · pittss · ppitts · ptits

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "pitted" for "Pitts" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "pitted" is an adjective and "Pitts" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "pitted" or "Pitts" show up more?
"pitted" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #23,631 in our English list, against #33,365 for "Pitts". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "pitted" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Pitts" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #122,299 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pitted" and "Pitts" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "piet vs Pitts". 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 #122,299 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