acrevsarkTell them apart

Which to use

“acre” and “ark” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#7,877
“acre” frequency rank
#10,324
“ark” frequency rank
18201
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature acre ark
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 large box with a flat lid.

Where the eye mixes acre and ark

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

4 ch
acre
3 ch
ark

Look-alike desk: acre vs ark

A purely visual mix-up. acre (/ˈeɪ.kə/) and ark (/ɑːk/) 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 18201, 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/. ark is at rank #10,324, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ɑːk/.

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 18201, this pair ranks #446,461 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of acre vs ark

Shared letters: ar. Private to "acre": ce. Private to "ark": k.

"acre" · 4 letters · shape VCCV  ·  "ark" · 3 letters · shape VCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • acreaccre · acrre

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "acre" and "ark" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (/ˈeɪ.kə/ versus /ɑːk/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary English text, does "acre" or "ark" show up more?
"acre" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #7,877 in our English list, against #10,324 for "ark". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "acre" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "ark" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #446,461 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "acre" and "ark" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "amb vs ark". 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 #446,461 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list