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PlainSpell

paste

/peɪst/noun, verb

paste is spelled P-A-S-T-E: 5 letters and one syllable. It appears 8.1 times per million words in written English, the 8,146th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a noun, paste means “One of flour, fat, or similar ingredients used in making pastry” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of paste is pastes.

How many letters and syllables are in paste?

Letters5: P-A-S-T-E
Syllables1 (from its American pronunciation)
In writing8.1 times per million words; the 8,146th most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searchednone measured in search
Sounds like
Same letters

Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.

How common is paste?

Paste appears 8.1 times per million words in written English, the 8,146th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

How do you pronounce paste?

  • /peɪst/

As a noun: /ˈpæsteɪ/, /ˈpɑsteɪ/.

Paste has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-paste.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Words people confuse with paste

Sounds like: paced (Wiktionary's homophone list; some hold only in some accents).

Sources: English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).

What rhymes with paste?

No other word on PlainSpell ends in the same sounds as paste (/ɑsteɪ/).

Spelled with the same letters in another order: spate, septa, aspet.

Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).

Forms of paste

  • pastes plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • pasting participle, present
  • pasted participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What does paste mean?

The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).

noun

  1. 1

    One of flour, fat, or similar ingredients used in making pastry.

  2. 2

    obsoletePastry.

  3. 3

    One of pounded foods, such as fish paste, liver paste, or tomato paste.

  4. 4

    One used as an adhesive, especially for putting up wallpapers, etc.

    Near-synonyms: glue, adhesive

  5. 5

    A substance that behaves as a solid until a sufficiently large load or stress is applied, at which point it flows like a fluid.

  6. 6

    A hard lead-containing glass; an artificial gemstone made from this glass.

  7. 7

    obsoletePasta.

  8. 8

    The mineral substance in which other minerals are embedded.

  9. 9

    rareplural of pasta (a form of pasta)

verb

  1. 1

    To stick with paste; to cause to adhere by or as if by paste.

  2. 2

    To insert a piece of media (e.g. text, picture, audio, video) previously copied or cut from somewhere else.

  3. 3

    slangTo strike or beat someone or something.

  4. 4

    slangTo defeat decisively or by a large margin.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Paste in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchpâte (a soft mixture), strass, stras (lead-containing glass, or an artificial…), coller (to cause to stick, adhere)
GermanPaste (a soft mixture), Teig (soft mixture used in making pastry), Pastete (soft mixture of pounded foods), Kleister, Klebstoff (an adhesive paste), einfügen (to insert a piece of media)
Spanishpasta (a soft mixture), pegar (to cause to stick, adhere), masa (soft mixture used in making pastry), paté, budín (soft mixture of pounded foods), engrudo (an adhesive paste)
Portuguesestrass (lead-containing glass, or an artificial…), aderir, colar (to cause to stick, adhere)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does paste come from?

From Middle English paste, from Old French paste (modern pâte), from Late Latin pasta, from Ancient Greek παστά (pastá). Doublet of pasta. The verb is from the noun. Middle English had pasten (“to make a paste of; bake in a pastry”), also from the noun; compare Latin pistō and Medieval Latin pastillātus.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What to look up after paste