Stimulus-response-binding effects are a central phenomenon in research concerning action control. Current models assume that upon responding to a stimulus, stimulus features, responses, and effects are collectively stored in a short episodic memory trace and upon repetition of any feature retrieved. This even includes the binding and retrieval of distractors, leading to so-called distractor-response-binding effects. The current experiment investigated how semantic stimuli as distractors, specifically real words and non-words, differently affect distractor-response-binding effects. In a prime-probe design, participants responded to the color of semantic stimuli while the identity of those stimuli was irrelevant to the task. Semantic stimuli could repeat or change from prime to probe; additionally, they were either real words or non-words. Results showed a significantly larger binding effect for words than for non-words in reaction times. These results suggest that, even as distractors, real words are processed differently from non-words. This is discussed in the context of their semantic meaning and the associations connected with it, making real words more relevant than non-words to the cognitive system.