Which to use
“child” is a noun and “chilled” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #500
- “child” frequency rank
- #15,125
- “chilled” frequency rank
- 15625
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | child | chilled |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | A person who has not yet reached adulthood, whether natural (puberty), cultural (initiation), or legal (majority). | Cooled. |
Where the eye mixes child and chilled
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. child runs 5 letters (CCVCC) against chilled's 7 (CCVCCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Look-alike desk: child vs chilled
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: child is /tʃaɪld/ while chilled is /t͡ʃɪld/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 2 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 15625, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
child is recorded at frequency rank #500, classified as anoun, pronounced /tʃaɪld/. chilled is at rank #15,125, tagged as anadj, pronounced /t͡ʃɪld/.
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 15625, this pair ranks #462,821 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of child vs chilled
Shared letters: cdhil. Private to "child": -. Private to "chilled": e.
"child" · 5 letters · shape CCVCC · "chilled" · 7 letters · shape CCVCCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "child" for "chilled" ever safe?
Which is more common, "child" or "chilled"?
What to do next
Eye-level mix-up between "child" and "chilled" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "child" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "chilled" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #462,821 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "child" and "chilled" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "celled vs chilled". 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 #462,821 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.