savvssavedTell them apart

Quick tell: sav is a noun, saved is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“sav” is a noun and “saved” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#40,009
“sav” frequency rank
#2,177
“saved” frequency rank
42186
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature sav saved
Definition A saveloy. simple past and past participle of save

Letter map: sav vs saved

Shared letters muted; letters that set sav and saved apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

3 ch
sav
5 ch
saved

Part-of-speech tell for sav / saved

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: sav is anoun and savedaverb. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “sav” sits inside “saved”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 42186, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

sav is recorded at frequency rank #40,009, classified as anoun. saved is at rank #2,177, tagged as averb, pronounced /seɪvd/.

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 42186, this pair ranks #251,537 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of sav vs saved

Shared letters: asv. Private to "sav": -. Private to "saved": de.

"sav" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "saved" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • savedasved · saevd · savde · savedd · savved · ssaved · svaed

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "sav" for "saved" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "sav" is a noun and "saved" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "sav" vs "saved" - which ranks higher?
"saved" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,177 in our English list, against #40,009 for "sav". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Pair "sav" vs "saved" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "sav" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "saved" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #251,537 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "sav" and "saved" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "sav vs Sif". 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 #251,537 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