Which to use
“acre” and “ale” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #7,877
- “acre” frequency rank
- #11,500
- “ale” frequency rank
- 19377
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | acre | ale |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | An English unit of land area (symbol: a. or ac.) originally denoting a day's ploughing for a yoke of oxen, now standardized as 4,840 square yards or 4,046.86 square metres. | A beer made without hops. |
Where the eye mixes acre and ale
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.
Look-alike desk: acre vs ale
A purely visual mix-up. acre (/ˈeɪ.kə/) and ale (/eɪl/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 19377, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
acre is recorded at frequency rank #7,877, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈeɪ.kə/. ale is at rank #11,500, tagged as anoun, pronounced /eɪl/.
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 19377, this pair ranks #438,615 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of acre vs ale
Shared letters: ae. Private to "acre": cr. Private to "ale": l.
"acre" · 4 letters · shape VCCV · "ale" · 3 letters · shape VCV
Known mistypes of this pair
- acre ← accre · acrre
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "acre" and "ale" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Frequency check: "acre" vs "ale" - which ranks higher?
Useful next steps
Eye-level mix-up between "acre" and "ale" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "acre" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "ale" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #438,615 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "acre" and "ale" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ale vs amb". 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 #438,615 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.