positionvspositionedTell them apart

Quick tell: position is a noun, positioned is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“position” is a noun and “positioned” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#624
“position” frequency rank
#9,796
“positioned” frequency rank
10420
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature position positioned
Definition A place or location. Being in a particular position; (figuratively) suitable.

Letter map: position vs positioned

Shared letters muted; letters that set position and positioned apart highlighted. Shared run: 8.

8 ch
position
10 ch
positioned

Part-of-speech tell for position / positioned

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: position is anoun and positionedanadjective. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “position” sits inside “positioned”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 10420, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

position is recorded at frequency rank #624, classified as anoun, pronounced /pəˈzɪʃ.ən/. positioned is at rank #9,796, tagged as anadj.

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 10420, this pair ranks #492,435 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of position vs positioned

Shared letters: inopst. Private to "position": -. Private to "positioned": de.

"position" · 8 letters · shape CVCVCVVC  ·  "positioned" · 10 letters · shape CVCVCVVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • positionopsition · poistion · posiiton · posision · positino · positionn · positoin · posittion
  • positionedopsitioned · poistioned · posiitoned · positinoed · positioend · positionde · positionedd · positionned

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "position" and "positioned" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "position" is a noun and "positioned" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "position" or "positioned" show up more?
"position" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #624 in our English list, against #9,796 for "positioned". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

You've compared "position" and "positioned". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "position" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "positioned" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #492,435 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "position" and "positioned" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "position vs positron". 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 #492,435 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