skirtvsskirtedTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#7,609
“skirt” frequency rank
#49,637
“skirted” frequency rank
57246
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature skirt skirted
Definition A separate article of clothing, usually worn by women and girls, that hangs from the waist and covers the lower torso and part of the legs. Wearing a skirt.

Letter map: skirt vs skirted

Shared letters muted; letters that set skirt and skirted apart highlighted. Shared run: 5. skirt runs 5 letters (CCVCC) against skirted's 7 (CCVCCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
skirt
7 ch
skirted

Part-of-speech tell for skirt / skirted

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: skirt is anoun and skirtedanadjective. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “skirt” sits inside “skirted”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 57246, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

skirt is recorded at frequency rank #7,609, classified as anoun, pronounced /skɜːt/. skirted is at rank #49,637, 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 57246, this pair ranks #120,618 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of skirt vs skirted

Shared letters: ikrst. Private to "skirt": -. Private to "skirted": de.

"skirt" · 5 letters · shape CCVCC  ·  "skirted" · 7 letters · shape CCVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • skirt ← ksirt · sikrt · skirrt · skirtt · skitr · skkirt · skrit · sskirt
  • skirted ← ksirted · sikrted · skiretd · skirrted · skirtde · skirtedd · skirtted · skitred

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "skirt" and "skirted" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "skirt" is a noun and "skirted" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "skirt" vs "skirted" - which ranks higher?
"skirt" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #7,609 in our English list, against #49,637 for "skirted". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pair "skirt" vs "skirted" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "skirt" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "skirted" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #120,618 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "skirt" and "skirted" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "skirted 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 #120,618 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