Which to use
“unpaid” is an adjective and “unsaid” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #10,788
- “unpaid” frequency rank
- #42,472
- “unsaid” frequency rank
- 53260
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | unpaid | unsaid |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Not paid for. | simple past and past participle of unsay |
Letter map: unpaid vs unsaid
Shared letters muted; letters that set unpaid and unsaid apart highlighted. Shared run: 5. unpaid and unsaid follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (VCCVVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Part-of-speech tell for unpaid / unsaid
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: unpaid is anadjective and unsaidaverb. On the page they differ by a single letter - p in “unpaid” becomes s in “unsaid”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 53260, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
unpaid is recorded at frequency rank #10,788, classified as anadj, pronounced /ʌnˈpeɪd/. unsaid is at rank #42,472, tagged as averb.
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 53260, this pair ranks #150,420 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of unpaid vs unsaid
Shared letters: adinu. Private to "unpaid": p. Private to "unsaid": s.
"unpaid" · 6 letters · shape VCCVVC · "unsaid" · 6 letters · shape VCCVVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "unpaid" and "unsaid" mean the same thing in a sentence?
In ordinary English text, does "unpaid" or "unsaid" show up more?
What to do next
Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "unpaid" and "unsaid".
- Full dictionary entry for "unpaid" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "unsaid" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #150,420 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "unpaid" and "unsaid" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "unsaid vs unsold". 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 #150,420 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.