allegingvsallowingWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: alleging is a noun, allowing is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“alleging” is a noun and “allowing” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#15,564
“alleging” frequency rank
#2,379
“allowing” frequency rank
17943
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature alleging allowing
Definition allegation present participle and gerund of allow

Letter map: alleging vs allowing

Shared letters muted; letters that set alleging and allowing apart highlighted. Shared run: 6. alleging and allowing follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (VCCVCVCC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

8 ch
alleging
8 ch
allowing

Role in the sentence - alleging and allowing

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: alleging is anoun and allowingaverb. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 17943, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

alleging is recorded at frequency rank #15,564, classified as anoun. allowing is at rank #2,379, tagged as averb, pronounced /əˈlaʊɪŋ/.

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 17943, this pair ranks #448,168 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of alleging vs allowing

Shared letters: agiln. Private to "alleging": e. Private to "allowing": ow.

"alleging" · 8 letters · shape VCCVCVCC  ·  "allowing" · 8 letters · shape VCCVCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • alleging ← aleging · alelging · allegging · allegign · allegingg · alleginng · allegnig · alleigng
  • allowing ← alloiwng · allowign · allowingg · allowinng · allownig · allowwing · allwoing · alolwing

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "alleging" and "allowing" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "alleging" is a noun and "allowing" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "alleging" or "allowing"?
"allowing" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,379 in our English list, against #15,564 for "alleging". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "alleging" and "allowing".

  • Full dictionary entry for "alleging" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "allowing" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #448,168 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "alleging" and "allowing" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "alleging vs alluding". 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 #448,168 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