passed
/pɑːst/
"passed" is a 6-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“passed” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #1,281 in English word frequency and used as a verb.
- #1,281
- frequency rank, English
- 6
- letters
- 7
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - simple past and past participle of pass
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | passed |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /pɑːst/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #1,281 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “passed” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for passed is 6 letters long, classified as a verb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /pɑːst/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,281 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "simple past and past participle of pass".
Our generated misspelling index lists 7 likely wrong-spelling variants for passed, with forms such as "apssed", "pased", and "pasesd". Every one of these variants traces to a single-character edit -- an added or dropped letter, a swapped consonant, or a vowel swap -- the kind of slip a spell-checker is built to catch. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "pause", "paste", "posed", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, so its spelling is best read as a straightforward mapping from sound to letter. The correct English form is passed, spelled P-A-S-S-E-D.
Definition
- 1simple past and past participle of pass
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: apssed,pased,pasesd,passde,passedd,ppassed,psased
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of passed - expressed in single-character edits (insert, delete, or swap one letter). Bigger bars stand out at a glance; a one-edit slip is the hardest to catch.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “passed”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is P-A-S-S-E-D - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /pɑːst/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “pause” - see the side-by-side comparison. passed vs pause
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.