Which to use
“borrowing” is a verb and “burrowing” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #10,336
- “borrowing” frequency rank
- #40,596
- “burrowing” frequency rank
- 50932
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | borrowing | burrowing |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | present participle and gerund of borrow | The act or result of making a burrow. |
Letter map: borrowing vs burrowing
Shared letters muted; letters that set borrowing and burrowing apart highlighted. Shared run: 8.
Part-of-speech tell for borrowing / burrowing
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: borrowing is averb and burrowinganoun. On the page they differ by a single letter - o in “borrowing” becomes u in “burrowing”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 50932, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
borrowing is recorded at frequency rank #10,336, classified as averb, pronounced /ˈbɔrəwɪŋ/. burrowing is at rank #40,596, tagged as anoun.
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 50932, this pair ranks #169,884 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of borrowing vs burrowing
Shared letters: bginorw. Private to "borrowing": -. Private to "burrowing": u.
"borrowing" · 9 letters · shape CVCCVCVCC · "burrowing" · 9 letters · shape CVCCVCVCC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "borrowing" for "burrowing" ever safe?
Which is more common, "borrowing" or "burrowing"?
Useful next steps
You've compared "borrowing" and "burrowing". Here's where to go from here.
- Full dictionary entry for "borrowing" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "burrowing" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #169,884 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- 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 #169,884 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.