appealvsappendConfusable pair

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

Which to use

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

#2,143
“appeal” frequency rank
#44,616
“append” frequency rank
46759
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature appeal append
Definition An application to a superior court or judge for a decision or order by an inferior court or judge to be reviewed and overturned. To hang or attach to, as by a string, so that the thing is suspended

Where the eye mixes appeal and append

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.

6 ch
appeal
6 ch
append

Visual trap between appeal and append

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: appeal is /əˈpiːl/ while append is /ʌˈpɛnd/. 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 (noun vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 46759, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

appeal is recorded at frequency rank #2,143, classified as anoun, pronounced /əˈpiːl/. append is at rank #44,616, tagged as averb, pronounced /ʌˈpɛnd/.

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 46759, this pair ranks #208,742 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of appeal vs append

Shared letters: aep. Private to "appeal": l. Private to "append": dn.

"appeal" · 6 letters · shape VCCVVC  ·  "append" · 6 letters · shape VCCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • appealapeal · apepal · appael · appeall · appela · papeal
  • appendapend · apepnd · appedn · appendd · appennd · appned · papend

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "appeal" for "append" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "appeal" is a noun and "append" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "appeal" or "append" show up more?
"appeal" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,143 in our English list, against #44,616 for "append". 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 "appeal" and "append" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "appeal" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "append" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #208,742 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "appeal" and "append" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "amped vs append". 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 #208,742 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