paste
/peɪst/
"paste" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“paste” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #8,183 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #8,183
- frequency rank, English
- 5
- letters
- 7
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A soft moist mixture, in particular:
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 | paste |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /peɪst/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #8,183 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “paste” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for paste is 5 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /peɪst/. Corpus data places it at rank #8,183 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 8 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 7 likely wrong-spelling variants for paste, with forms such as "apste", "paset", and "passte". 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, "pat", "PST", "post", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *(s)kweh₁t-der. Ancient Greek πάσσω (pássō) Proto-Indo-European *-tós Ancient Greek -τός (-tós) Ancient Greek παστός (pastós) Ancient Greek παστά (pastá)bor. Late Latin pasta Old French pastebor. Middle English paste Engli… The correct English form is paste, spelled P-A-S-T-E.
Definition
- 1A soft moist mixture, in particular:
- 2A soft moist mixture, in particular:
- 3A soft moist mixture, in particular:
- 4A soft moist mixture, in particular:
- 5A substance that behaves as a solid until a sufficiently large load or stress is applied, at which point it flows like a fluid
- 6A hard lead-containing glass, or an artificial gemstone made from this glass.
- 7Pasta.
- 8The mineral substance in which other minerals are embedded.
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *(s)kweh₁t-der. Ancient Greek πάσσω (pássō) Proto-Indo-European *-tós Ancient Greek -τός (-tós) Ancient Greek παστός (pastós) Ancient Greek παστά (pastá)bor. Late Latin pasta Old French pastebor. Middle English paste English paste 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.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: apste,paset,passte,pastte,patse,ppaste,psate
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of paste - counted as single-character edits (an insertion, a deletion, or a substituted letter). The larger the bar, the easier the typo is to spot; one-edit slips are the ones that sneak past readers.
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 “paste”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is P-A-S-T-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /peɪst/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “pat” - see the side-by-side comparison. paste vs pat
- 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.