Align or aline?
align is a verb meaning “To form a line; to fall into line”; aline is an adverb meaning “In line”. Use align as a verb and aline as an adverb. In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) align is about 11 times as common as aline.
What is the difference between align and aline?
| align | aline | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | verb | verb, adverb |
| Meaning | To form a line; to fall into line To adjust to a line; to range or form in line; to bring into line | In line |
| Example | The pedestrians aligned in such a way that from above they made a pyramidal pattern | none recorded |
| Forms | aligns, aligning, aligned | none |
| Pronunciation | /əˈlaɪn/ /æˈlaɪn/ | /əˈlaɪn/ /æˈlaɪn/ |
| In writing | 4.3 times per million words | about once in every 3 million words |
Sources: align and aline in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of align and aline
align
- 1
To form a line; to fall into line
The pedestrians aligned in such a way that from above they made a pyramidal pattern
- 2
To adjust to a line; to range or form in line; to bring into line
- 3
To organize in a consistent, defined way, perhaps in an abstract sense
- 4
To identify (oneself) with, match, or support the behaviour, thoughts, etc. of another person, organization, or country
- 5
To store (data) in a way that is consistent with the memory architecture, i.e. by beginning each item at an offset equal to some multiple of the word size
- 6
To organize a linear arrangement of DNA, RNA, or protein sequences which have regions of similarity
- 7
To identify entities that refer to the same real-world object in different knowledge bases
aline
- 1
In line
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, align or aline?
align appears 4.3 times per million words; aline about once in every 3 million words.
align 4.3 times per million wordsaline about once in every 3 million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search align vs aline?
“align vs aline” is searched about 70 times a month on Google and 20 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“aline vs align”, “align or aline”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.