windedvswittedWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#34,351
“winded” frequency rank
#34,749
“witted” frequency rank
69100
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature winded witted
Definition simple past and past participle of wind having a specified form of wit (intellectual ability)

Letter map: winded vs witted

Shared letters muted; letters that set winded and witted apart highlighted. Shared run: 4.

6 ch
winded
6 ch
witted

Part-of-speech tell for winded / witted

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: winded is averb and wittedanadjective. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 69100, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

winded is recorded at frequency rank #34,351, classified as averb. witted is at rank #34,749, tagged as anadj, pronounced /ˈwɪtɪd/.

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 69100, this pair ranks #55,970 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of winded vs witted

Shared letters: deiw. Private to "winded": n. Private to "witted": t.

"winded" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC  ·  "witted" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • windediwnded · widned · windde · windded · windedd · winedd · winnded · wnided
  • wittediwtted · wited · witetd · wittde · wittedd · wtited · wwitted

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "winded" for "witted" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "winded" is a verb and "witted" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "winded" or "witted"?
"winded" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #34,351 in our English list, against #34,749 for "witted". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "winded" and "witted".

  • Full dictionary entry for "winded" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "witted" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #55,970 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "winded" and "witted" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "whined vs winded". 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 #55,970 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