readyvsrendWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: ready is a adjective, rend is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#21,751
“ready” frequency rank
#856
“rend” frequency rank
22607
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ready rend
Definition Prêt , prête. Troisième personne du singulier de l’indicatif présent de rendre.

Where the eye mixes ready and rend

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

5 ch
ready
4 ch
rend

Why the eye confuses ready with rend

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: ready is \ˈɹɛd.i\ while rend is \ʁɑ̃\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 22607, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ready is recorded at frequency rank #21,751, classified as anadj, pronounced \ˈɹɛd.i\. rend is at rank #856, tagged as averb, pronounced \ʁɑ̃\.

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 22607, this pair ranks #357,076 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of ready vs rend

Shared letters: der. Private to "ready": ay. Private to "rend": n.

"ready" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV  ·  "rend" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • readyerady · raedy · readdy · readyy · reayd · reday · rready
  • rendernd · redn · rendd · rennd · rned · rrend

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "ready" and "rend" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "ready" is an adjective and "rend" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "ready" or "rend" show up more?
"rend" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #856 in our French list, against #21,751 for "ready". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "ready" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "rend" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #357,076 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ready" and "rend" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ready vs ryad". 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 #357,076 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