alonevsamineWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: alone is a adjective, amine is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“alone” is an adjective and “amine” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#703
“alone” frequency rank
#37,315
“amine” frequency rank
38018
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature alone amine
Definition By oneself, solitary. A functional group formally derived from ammonia by replacing one, two or three hydrogen atoms with hydrocarbon or other radicals.

Where the eye mixes alone and amine

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

5 ch
alone
5 ch
amine

Why the eye confuses alone with amine

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: alone is /əˈləʊn/ while amine is /əˈmiːn/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 38018, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

alone is recorded at frequency rank #703, classified as anadj, pronounced /əˈləʊn/. amine is at rank #37,315, tagged as anoun, pronounced /əˈmiːn/.

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 38018, this pair ranks #289,550 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of alone vs amine

Shared letters: aen. Private to "alone": lo. Private to "amine": im.

"alone" · 5 letters · shape VCVCV  ·  "amine" · 5 letters · shape VCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • aloneallone · alnoe · aloen · alonne · aolne · laone
  • amineaimne · amien · aminne · ammine · amnie

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "alone" and "amine" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "alone" is an adjective and "amine" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "alone" or "amine" show up more?
"alone" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #703 in our English list, against #37,315 for "amine". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "alone" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "amine" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #289,550 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "alone" and "amine" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "aline vs amine". 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 #289,550 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