walkedvswiltedConfusable pair

Quick tell: walked is a verb, wilted is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#2,187
“walked” frequency rank
#47,423
“wilted” frequency rank
49610
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature walked wilted
Definition simple past and past participle of walk Drooping, typically due to lack of water.

Letter map: walked vs wilted

Shared letters muted; letters that set walked and wilted apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. walked and wilted follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

6 ch
walked
6 ch
wilted

Part-of-speech tell for walked / wilted

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: walked is averb and wiltedanadjective. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 49610, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

walked is recorded at frequency rank #2,187, classified as averb, pronounced /wɔːkt/. wilted is at rank #47,423, 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 49610, this pair ranks #181,965 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of walked vs wilted

Shared letters: delw. Private to "walked": ak. Private to "wilted": it.

"walked" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC  ·  "wilted" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • walkedawlked · wakled · walekd · walkde · walkedd · walkked · wallked · wlaked
  • wiltediwlted · wiletd · willted · wiltde · wiltedd · wiltted · witled · wlited

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "walked" and "wilted" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "walked" is a verb and "wilted" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "walked" or "wilted"?
"walked" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,187 in our English list, against #47,423 for "wilted". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "walked" and "wilted".

  • Full dictionary entry for "walked" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "wilted" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #181,965 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "walked" and "wilted" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Willey vs wilted". 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 #181,965 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