almvsarmyConfusable pair

Which to use

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

#43,024
“alm” frequency rank
#921
“army” frequency rank
43945
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature alm army
Definition Something given to the poor as charity: a singular gift of alms. A large, highly organized military force, concerned mainly with ground (rather than air or naval) operations.

Where the eye mixes alm and army

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

3 ch
alm
4 ch
army

Look-alike desk: alm vs army

A purely visual mix-up. alm (/ɑːm/) and army (/ˈɑː.mi/) 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 43945, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

alm is recorded at frequency rank #43,024, classified as anoun, pronounced /ɑːm/. army is at rank #921, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈɑː.mi/.

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 43945, this pair ranks #235,145 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of alm vs army

Shared letters: am. Private to "alm": l. Private to "army": ry.

"alm" · 3 letters · shape VCC  ·  "army" · 4 letters · shape VCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • armyamry · armmy · armyy · arrmy · arym · ramy

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "alm" for "army" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (/ɑːm/ versus /ˈɑː.mi/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary English text, does "alm" or "army" show up more?
"army" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #921 in our English list, against #43,024 for "alm". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Eye-level mix-up between "alm" and "army" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "alm" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "army" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #235,145 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "alm" and "army" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "alm 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 #235,145 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