Which to use
“banana” and “bananas” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #7,096
- “banana” frequency rank
- #11,166
- “bananas” frequency rank
- 18262
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | banana | bananas |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | An elongated curved tropical fruit of a banana plant, which grows in bunches and has a creamy flesh and a smooth skin. | plural of banana |
Where the eye mixes banana and bananas
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 6 letters in sequence. banana runs 6 letters (CVCVCV) against bananas's 7 (CVCVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Look-alike desk: banana vs bananas
A purely visual mix-up. banana (/bəˈnɑː.nə/) and bananas (/bəˈnɑː.nəz/) 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 extra letter(s) - “banana” sits inside “bananas”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 18262, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
banana is recorded at frequency rank #7,096, classified as anoun, pronounced /bəˈnɑː.nə/. bananas is at rank #11,166, tagged as anoun, pronounced /bəˈnɑː.nəz/.
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 18262, this pair ranks #446,057 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of banana vs bananas
Shared letters: abn. Private to "banana": -. Private to "bananas": s.
"banana" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV · "bananas" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "banana" and "bananas" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Which is more common, "banana" or "bananas"?
Useful next steps
Eye-level mix-up between "banana" and "bananas" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "banana" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "bananas" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #446,057 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "banana" and "bananas" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "banana vs banyan". 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 #446,057 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.