cinquevssyncWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#49,253
“cinque” frequency rank
#8,868
“sync” frequency rank
58121
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cinque sync
Definition A card, die, or domino with five spots or pips. Clipping of synchronization or synchrony.

Same sound, different letters: cinque vs sync

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 1 letter.

6 ch
cinque
4 ch
sync

Same sound, different spelling - cinque / sync

This is the hard kind. cinque and sync are pronounced identically (/sɪŋk/) and both work as anoun. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 58121, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cinque is recorded at frequency rank #49,253, classified as anoun, pronounced /sɪŋk/. sync is at rank #8,868, tagged as anoun, pronounced /sɪŋk/.

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 58121, this pair ranks #114,754 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of cinque vs sync

Shared letters: cn. Private to "cinque": eiqu. Private to "sync": sy.

"cinque" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVV  ·  "sync" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • cinqueccinque · cinnque · cinqeu · cinqque · cinuqe · ciqnue · cnique · icnque
  • syncsnyc · ssync · sycn · syncc · synnc · syync · ysnc

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "cinque" and "sync" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are pronounced the same (/sɪŋk/), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
In ordinary English text, does "cinque" or "sync" show up more?
"sync" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #8,868 in our English list, against #49,253 for "cinque". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Sound matches; spelling doesn't. Use the exits below to lock the right form or check a cousin pair.

  • Full dictionary entry for "cinque" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "sync" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #114,754 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cinque" and "sync" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cine vs cinque". 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 #114,754 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