Which to use
“pitted” is an adjective and “potted” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #23,631
- “pitted” frequency rank
- #31,298
- “potted” frequency rank
- 54929
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | pitted | potted |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Having a surface marked by pits; pockmarked or alveolate. | simple past and past participle of pot |
Letter map: pitted vs potted
Shared letters muted; letters that set pitted and potted apart highlighted. Shared run: 5. pitted and potted follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Part-of-speech tell for pitted / potted
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: pitted is anadjective and pottedaverb. On the page they differ by a single letter - i in “pitted” becomes o in “potted”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 54929, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
pitted is recorded at frequency rank #23,631, classified as anadj. potted is at rank #31,298, tagged as averb.
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 54929, this pair ranks #137,403 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of pitted vs potted
Shared letters: dept. Private to "pitted": i. Private to "potted": o.
"pitted" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC · "potted" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "pitted" and "potted" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Which is more common, "pitted" or "potted"?
Useful next steps
Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "pitted" and "potted".
- Full dictionary entry for "pitted" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "potted" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #137,403 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "pitted" and "potted" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Ponte vs potted". 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 #137,403 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.