panevspastTell them apart

Quick tell: pane is a noun, past is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“pane” is a noun and “past” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#27,961
“pane” frequency rank
#20,081
“past” frequency rank
48042
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature pane past
Definition defeito, quebra passado

Letter map: pane vs past

Shared letters muted; letters that set pane and past apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. pane (CVCV) and past (CVCC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

4 ch
pane
4 ch
past

Grammar separator: pane vs past

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: pane is anoun and pastanadjective. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 48042, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

pane is recorded at frequency rank #27,961, classified as anoun. past is at rank #20,081, tagged as anadj, pronounced /pɑːst/.

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 48042, this pair ranks #17,178 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of pane vs past

Shared letters: ap. Private to "pane": en. Private to "past": st.

"pane" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "past" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • pane ← apne · paen · panne · pnae · ppane
  • past ← apst · passt · pastt · pats · ppast · psat

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "pane" for "past" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "pane" is a noun and "past" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "pane" or "past" show up more?
"past" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #20,081 in our Portuguese list, against #27,961 for "pane". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "pane" and "past".

  • Full dictionary entry for "pane" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "past" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #17,178 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "pane" and "past" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pale vs pane". 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 #17,178 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list