Which to use
“played” and “prayed” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #590
- “played” frequency rank
- #11,761
- “prayed” frequency rank
- 12351
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | played | prayed |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | simple past and past participle of play | simple past and past participle of pray |
Where the eye mixes played and prayed
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence.
Look-alike desk: played vs prayed
A purely visual mix-up. played (/pleɪd/) and prayed (/pɹeɪd/) 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 a single letter - l in “played” becomes r in “prayed”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 12351, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
played is recorded at frequency rank #590, classified as averb, pronounced /pleɪd/. prayed is at rank #11,761, tagged as averb, pronounced /pɹeɪd/.
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 12351, this pair ranks #482,056 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of played vs prayed
Shared letters: adepy. Private to "played": l. Private to "prayed": r.
"played" · 6 letters · shape CCVVVC · "prayed" · 6 letters · shape CCVVVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "played" and "prayed" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Which is more common, "played" or "prayed"?
After this comparison
Eye-level mix-up between "played" and "prayed" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "played" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "prayed" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #482,056 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "played" and "prayed" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "prayed vs pruned". 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 #482,056 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.