Said or sed?
said is an adjective meaning “Mentioned earlier; aforesaid”; sed is a verb meaning “To edit a file or stream of text using sed”. Use said as an adjective and sed as a verb. They sound the same (/sɛd/). In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) said is about 1,175 times as common as sed.
What is the difference between said and sed?
| said | sed | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | adjective, determiner, noun, verb | verb, noun |
| Meaning | Mentioned earlier; aforesaid | A line fastening a fish-hook |
| Example | The said party has denied the charges | Can you sed out those trailing spaces, please? |
| Forms | none | seds, sedding, sedded |
| Pronunciation | /sɛd/ [sɛd̥] /seɪd/ | /sɛd/ |
| In writing | 1,023 times per million words | about once in every 1 million words |
Sources: said and sed in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of said and sed
said
- 1
Mentioned earlier; aforesaid
The said party has denied the charges
- 2
Mentioned earlier; aforesaid
Said party has denied the charges
- 3
Alternative form of Sayyid
sed
- 1
slangTo edit a file or stream of text using sed
Can you sed out those trailing spaces, please?
- 2
A line fastening a fish-hook
- 3
Eye dialect spelling of said
- 4
Initialism of surface-conduction electron-emitter display
- 5
Initialism of spectral energy distribution
- 6
Initialism of selective eating disorder
- 7
Initialism of self-encrypting drive
- 8
Initialism of socio-economic development
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, said or sed?
said appears 1,023 times per million words; sed about once in every 1 million words.
said 1,023 times per million wordssed about once in every 1 million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search said vs sed?
“said vs sed” is searched about 30 times a month on Google and 10 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“sed vs said”, “said or sed”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.