Which to use
“adequate” is an adjective and “adequately” is an adverb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #6,539
- “adequate” frequency rank
- #12,175
- “adequately” frequency rank
- 18714
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | adequate | adequately |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Equal to or fulfilling some requirement. | In an adequate manner. |
Letter map: adequate vs adequately
Shared letters muted; letters that set adequate and adequately apart highlighted. Shared run: 8.
Part-of-speech tell for adequate / adequately
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: adequate is anadjective and adequatelyanadverb. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “adequate” sits inside “adequately”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 18714, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
adequate is recorded at frequency rank #6,539, classified as anadj, pronounced /ˈæd.ə.kwɪt/. adequately is at rank #12,175, tagged as anadv.
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 18714, this pair ranks #443,027 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of adequate vs adequately
Shared letters: adeqtu. Private to "adequate": -. Private to "adequately": ly.
"adequate" · 8 letters · shape VCVCVVCV · "adequately" · 10 letters · shape VCVCVVCVCV
Known mistypes of this pair
- adequate ← addequate · adeqaute · adeqquate · adequaet · adequatte · adequtae · adeuqate · adqeuate
- adequately ← addequately · adeqautely · adeqquately · adequaetly · adequatelly · adequatelyy · adequateyl · adequatley
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "adequate" and "adequately" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Which is more common, "adequate" or "adequately"?
Useful next steps
Pair "adequate" vs "adequately" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.
- Full dictionary entry for "adequate" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "adequately" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #443,027 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "adequate" and "adequately" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "adequacy vs adequate". 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 #443,027 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.