clevevscloneWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#47,535
“cleve” frequency rank
#11,518
“clone” frequency rank
59053
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cleve clone
Definition A room; chamber. A living organism (originally a plant) produced asexually from a single ancestor, to which it is genetically identical.

Letter map: cleve vs clone

Shared letters muted; letters that set cleve and clone apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

5 ch
cleve
5 ch
clone

Pair insight - cleve / clone

cleve and clone are indexed as a confusable English pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 59053, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cleve is recorded at frequency rank #47,535, classified as anoun. clone is at rank #11,518, tagged as anoun, pronounced /kloʊn/.

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 59053, this pair ranks #108,601 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of cleve vs clone

Shared letters: cel. Private to "cleve": v. Private to "clone": no.

"cleve" · 5 letters · shape CCVCV  ·  "clone" · 5 letters · shape CCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • cleveccleve · celve · cleev · clevve · clleve · clvee · lceve
  • clonecclone · cllone · clnoe · cloen · clonne · colne · lcone

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "cleve" for "clone" ever safe?
No. They share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
Frequency check: "cleve" vs "clone" - which ranks higher?
"clone" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #11,518 in our English list, against #47,535 for "cleve". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "cleve" and "clone". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "cleve" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "clone" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #108,601 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cleve" and "clone" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cleaved vs cleve". 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 #108,601 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