Which to use
“tooth” is a noun and “toothed” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #6,305
- “tooth” frequency rank
- #27,679
- “toothed” frequency rank
- 33984
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | tooth | toothed |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | A hard, calcareous structure present in the mouth of many vertebrate animals, generally used for biting and chewing food. | Having teeth. |
Where the eye mixes tooth and toothed
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. tooth runs 5 letters (CVVCC) against toothed's 7 (CVVCCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Look-alike desk: tooth vs toothed
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: tooth is /tuːθ/ while toothed is /tuːθt/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “tooth” sits inside “toothed”, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 33984, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
tooth is recorded at frequency rank #6,305, classified as anoun, pronounced /tuːθ/. toothed is at rank #27,679, tagged as anadj, pronounced /tuːθt/.
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 33984, this pair ranks #324,663 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of tooth vs toothed
Shared letters: hot. Private to "tooth": -. Private to "toothed": de.
"tooth" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC · "toothed" · 7 letters · shape CVVCCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "tooth" for "toothed" ever safe?
Frequency check: "tooth" vs "toothed" - which ranks higher?
Useful next steps
Eye-level mix-up between "tooth" and "toothed" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "tooth" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "toothed" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #324,663 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "tooth" and "toothed" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "tooth vs Toth". 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 #324,663 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.