Which to use
“censure” and “century” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #31,101
- “censure” frequency rank
- #1,011
- “century” frequency rank
- 32112
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | censure | century |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | The act of blaming, criticizing, or condemning as wrong; reprehension. | A period of one hundred consecutive years; often specifically a numbered period with conventional start and end dates, e.g., the twentieth century, which stretches from (strictly) 1901 through 2000, or (informally) 1900 through 1999. The first century AD was from 1 to 100. |
Where the eye mixes censure and century
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. censure and century follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCCVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Visual trap between censure and century
A purely visual mix-up. censure (/ˈsɛn.ʃə/) and century (/ˈsɛnt͡ʃʊɹi/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 32112, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
censure is recorded at frequency rank #31,101, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈsɛn.ʃə/. century is at rank #1,011, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈsɛnt͡ʃʊɹi/.
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 32112, this pair ranks #340,538 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of censure vs century
Shared letters: cenru. Private to "censure": s. Private to "century": ty.
"censure" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCV · "century" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCV
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Can "censure" and "century" be used interchangeably?
In ordinary English text, does "censure" or "century" show up more?
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 "censure" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "century" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #340,538 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "censure" and "century" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "censure vs censuses". 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 #340,538 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.