ClovscoonWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#48,144
“Clo” frequency rank
#26,380
“coon” frequency rank
74524
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Clo coon
Definition Abbreviation of close (in street addresses). A black person.

Letter map: Clo vs coon

Shared letters muted; letters that set Clo and coon apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. Clo runs 3 letters (CCV) against coon's 4 (CVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

3 ch
Clo
4 ch
coon

Corpus notes: Clo and coon

Clo and coon 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 differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 74524, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Clo is recorded at frequency rank #48,144, classified as anoun. coon is at rank #26,380, tagged as anoun, pronounced /kun/.

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 74524, this pair ranks #36,089 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of Clo vs coon

Shared letters: co. Private to "Clo": l. Private to "coon": n.

"Clo" · 3 letters · shape CCV  ·  "coon" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • coon ← ccoon · cono · coonn · ocon

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "Clo" for "coon" ever safe?
No. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
Frequency check: "Clo" vs "coon" - which ranks higher?
"coon" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #26,380 in our English list, against #48,144 for "Clo". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "Clo" and "coon". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "Clo" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "coon" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #36,089 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Clo" and "coon" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "CGT vs Clo". 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 #36,089 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