seavsstWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: sea is a noun, st is a symbol, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“sea” is a noun and “st” is a symbol - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#13,258
“sea” frequency rank
#1,190
“st” frequency rank
14448
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature sea st
Definition Mer. Symbole de la stère.

Letter map: sea vs st

Shared letters muted; letters that set sea and st apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

3 ch
sea
2 ch
st

Part-of-speech tell for sea / st

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: sea is anoun and stasymbol. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 14448, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

sea is recorded at frequency rank #13,258, classified as anoun, pronounced \siː\. st is at rank #1,190, tagged as asymbol.

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 14448, this pair ranks #396,605 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of sea vs st

Shared letters: s. Private to "sea": ae. Private to "st": t.

"sea" · 3 letters · shape CVV  ·  "st" · 2 letters · shape CC

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "sea" for "st" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "sea" is a noun and "st" a symbol, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "sea" vs "st" - which ranks higher?
"st" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,190 in our French list, against #13,258 for "sea". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

You've compared "sea" and "st". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "sea" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "st" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #396,605 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "sea" and "st" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "sea vs suu". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #396,605 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