saltedvsstatedConfusable pair

Quick tell: salted is a adjective, stated is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“salted” is an adjective and “stated” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#20,217
“salted” frequency rank
#1,880
“stated” frequency rank
22097
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature salted stated
Definition To which salt has been added. simple past and past participle of state

Letter map: salted vs stated

Shared letters muted; letters that set salted and stated apart highlighted. Shared run: 5.

6 ch
salted
6 ch
stated

Part-of-speech tell for salted / stated

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: salted is anadjective and statedaverb. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 22097, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

salted is recorded at frequency rank #20,217, classified as anadj. stated is at rank #1,880, tagged as averb, pronounced /ˈsteɪtɪd/.

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 22097, this pair ranks #419,118 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of salted vs stated

Shared letters: adest. Private to "salted": l. Private to "stated": -.

"salted" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC  ·  "stated" · 6 letters · shape CCVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • saltedaslted · saletd · sallted · saltde · saltedd · saltted · satled · ssalted
  • statedsatted · sstated · staetd · statde · statedd · statted · sttaed · sttated

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "salted" for "stated" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "salted" is an adjective and "stated" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "salted" or "stated" show up more?
"stated" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,880 in our English list, against #20,217 for "salted". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pair "salted" vs "stated" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "salted" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "stated" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #419,118 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "salted" and "stated" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "salted vs stilted". 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 #419,118 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