GailvsguildWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: Gail is a name, guild is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“Gail” is a name and “guild” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#34,672
“Gail” frequency rank
#38,788
“guild” frequency rank
73460
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Gail guild
Definition ein Fluss in Österreich, rechter Nebenfluss der Drau eine Gruppe von Personen, die die gleichen Interessen verfolgen; Gilde, Zunft

Letter map: Gail vs guild

Shared letters muted; letters that set Gail and guild apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. Gail runs 4 letters (CVVC) against guild's 5 (CVVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
Gail
5 ch
guild

Part-of-speech tell for Gail / guild

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: Gail is aname and guildanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 73460, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Gail is recorded at frequency rank #34,672, classified as aname, pronounced [ɡaɪ̯l]. guild is at rank #38,788, tagged as anoun, pronounced […].

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 73460, this pair ranks #359,800 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of Gail vs guild

Shared letters: gil. Private to "Gail": a. Private to "guild": du.

"Gail" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "guild" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Gail ← gaill · gali · ggail · gial
  • guild ← gguild · giuld · guidl · guildd · guilld · gulid · ugild

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "Gail" for "guild" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Gail" is a name and "guild" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "Gail" or "guild"?
"Gail" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #34,672 in our German list, against #38,788 for "guild". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

You've compared "Gail" and "guild". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "Gail" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "guild" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #359,800 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Gail" and "guild" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "guild vs puzzles". 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 #359,800 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list