Which to use
“place” is a noun and “placed” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #187
- “place” frequency rank
- #1,491
- “placed” frequency rank
- 1678
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | place | placed |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | An area; somewhere within an area. | simple past and past participle of place |
Where the eye mixes place and placed
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence.
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: place is /pleɪs/ while placed is /pleɪst/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “place” sits inside “placed”, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 1678, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
place is recorded at frequency rank #187, classified as anoun, pronounced /pleɪs/. placed is at rank #1,491, tagged as averb, pronounced /pleɪst/.
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 1678, this pair ranks #526,917 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of place vs placed
Shared letters: acelp. Private to "place": -. Private to "placed": d.
"place" · 5 letters · shape CCVCV · "placed" · 6 letters · shape CCVCVC