Which to use
“cloth” and “clough” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #6,772
- “cloth” frequency rank
- #33,578
- “clough” frequency rank
- 40350
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | cloth | clough |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | A fabric, usually made of woven, knitted, or felted fibres or filaments, such as used in dressing, decorating, cleaning or other practical use. Sometimes, woven fabric specifically. | A narrow valley; a cleft in a hillside; a ravine, glen, or gorge. |
Where the eye mixes cloth and clough
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. cloth runs 5 letters (CCVCC) against clough's 6 (CCVVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Visual trap between cloth and clough
A purely visual mix-up. cloth (/klɒθ/) and clough (/klʌf/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 40350, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
cloth is recorded at frequency rank #6,772, classified as anoun, pronounced /klɒθ/. clough is at rank #33,578, tagged as anoun, pronounced /klʌf/.
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 40350, this pair ranks #268,401 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of cloth vs clough
Shared letters: chlo. Private to "cloth": t. Private to "clough": gu.
"cloth" · 5 letters · shape CCVCC · "clough" · 6 letters · shape CCVVCC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "cloth" and "clough" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Which is more common, "cloth" or "clough"?
After this comparison
Eye-level mix-up between "cloth" and "clough" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "cloth" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "clough" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #268,401 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "cloth" and "clough" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "clog vs clough". 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 #268,401 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.