Which to use
“artfully” and “awfully” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #43,035
- “artfully” frequency rank
- #16,845
- “awfully” frequency rank
- 59880
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | artfully | awfully |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | In an artful manner. | Badly, terribly. |
Letter map: artfully vs awfully
Shared letters muted; letters that set artfully and awfully apart highlighted. Shared run: 6. artfully runs 8 letters (VCCCVCCV) against awfully's 7 (VCCVCCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Spelling & dictionary notes on artfully vs awfully
artfully and awfully are indexed as a confusable English pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 59880, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
artfully is recorded at frequency rank #43,035, classified as anadv. awfully is at rank #16,845, tagged as anadv, pronounced /ˈɔː.fʊ.li/.
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 59880, this pair ranks #103,536 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of artfully vs awfully
Shared letters: afluy. Private to "artfully": rt. Private to "awfully": w.
"artfully" · 8 letters · shape VCCCVCCV · "awfully" · 7 letters · shape VCCVCCV
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "artfully" and "awfully" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Frequency check: "artfully" vs "awfully" - which ranks higher?
After this comparison
You've compared "artfully" and "awfully". Here's where to go from here.
- Full dictionary entry for "artfully" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "awfully" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #103,536 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "artfully" and "awfully" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "artful vs artfully". 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 #103,536 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.