brandvsbundWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

“brand” and “bund” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#1,553
“brand” frequency rank
#39,229
“bund” frequency rank
40782
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature brand bund
Definition A mark or scar made by burning with a hot iron, especially to mark cattle or to classify the contents of a cask. A league or confederacy; especially the confederation of German states.

Where the eye mixes brand and bund

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. brand runs 5 letters (CCVCC) against bund's 4 (CVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
brand
4 ch
bund

Visual trap between brand and bund

A purely visual mix-up. brand (/bɹænd/) and bund (/bʊnd/) 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 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 40782, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

brand is recorded at frequency rank #1,553, classified as anoun, pronounced /bɹænd/. bund is at rank #39,229, tagged as anoun, pronounced /bʊnd/.

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 40782, this pair ranks #264,437 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of brand vs bund

Shared letters: bdn. Private to "brand": ar. Private to "bund": u.

"brand" · 5 letters · shape CCVCC  ·  "bund" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • brand ← barnd · bbrand · bradn · brandd · brannd · brnad · brrand · rband
  • bund ← bbund · bnud · budn · bundd · bunnd · ubnd

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "brand" and "bund" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (/bɹænd/ versus /bʊnd/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary English text, does "brand" or "bund" show up more?
"brand" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,553 in our English list, against #39,229 for "bund". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "brand" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "bund" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #264,437 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "brand" and "bund" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "bendy vs bund". 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 #264,437 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