Which to use
“sailed” is a verb and “stapled” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #11,109
- “sailed” frequency rank
- #47,927
- “stapled” frequency rank
- 59036
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | sailed | stapled |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | simple past and past participle of sail | Fastened with staples. |
Letter map: sailed vs stapled
Shared letters muted; letters that set sailed and stapled apart highlighted. Shared run: 5. sailed runs 6 letters (CVVCVC) against stapled's 7 (CCVCCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Part-of-speech tell for sailed / stapled
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: sailed is averb and stapledanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 59036, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
sailed is recorded at frequency rank #11,109, classified as averb, pronounced /seɪld/. stapled is at rank #47,927, 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 59036, this pair ranks #108,728 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of sailed vs stapled
Shared letters: adels. Private to "sailed": i. Private to "stapled": pt.
"sailed" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVC · "stapled" · 7 letters · shape CCVCCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "sailed" for "stapled" ever safe?
Frequency check: "sailed" vs "stapled" - which ranks higher?
After this comparison
Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "sailed" and "stapled".
- Full dictionary entry for "sailed" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "stapled" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #108,728 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "sailed" and "stapled" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "stapled vs starlet". 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 #108,728 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.