pacesvsplaceWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: paces is a verb, place is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“paces” is a verb and “place” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#43,583
“paces” frequency rank
#178
“place” frequency rank
43761
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature paces place
Definition Deuxième personne du singulier (tú) du présent de l’indicatif de pacer. Lieu, endroit, espace qu’occupe ou que peut occuper une personne, une chose.

Where the eye mixes paces and place

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.

5 ch
paces
5 ch
place

Visual trap between paces and place

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: paces is \ˈpa.θes\ while place is \plas\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 4 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 43761, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

paces is recorded at frequency rank #43,583, classified as averb, pronounced \ˈpa.θes\. place is at rank #178, tagged as anoun, pronounced \plas\.

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 43761, this pair ranks #215,631 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of paces vs place

Shared letters: acep. Private to "paces": s. Private to "place": l.

"paces" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "place" · 5 letters · shape CCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • pacesapces · pacces · pacess · pacse · paecs · pcaes · ppaces
  • placelpace · palce · placce · plaec · plcae · pllace · pplace

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "paces" and "place" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "paces" is a verb and "place" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "paces" vs "place" - which ranks higher?
"place" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #178 in our French list, against #43,583 for "paces". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Eye-level mix-up between "paces" and "place" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "paces" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "place" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #215,631 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "paces" and "place" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "paces vs palaces". 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 #215,631 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list