clothingvsclottingConfusable pair

Which to use

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

#3,155
“clothing” frequency rank
#33,987
“clotting” frequency rank
37142
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature clothing clotting
Definition present participle and gerund of clothe present participle and gerund of clot

Letter map: clothing vs clotting

Shared letters muted; letters that set clothing and clotting apart highlighted. Shared run: 7. clothing and clotting follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CCVCCVCC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

8 ch
clothing
8 ch
clotting

Pair insight - clothing / clotting

clothing and clotting 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 a single letter - h in “clothing” becomes t in “clotting”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 37142, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

clothing is recorded at frequency rank #3,155, classified as averb, pronounced /ˈkləʊðɪŋ/. clotting is at rank #33,987, tagged as averb.

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 37142, this pair ranks #297,041 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of clothing vs clotting

Shared letters: cgilnot. Private to "clothing": h. Private to "clotting": -.

"clothing" · 8 letters · shape CCVCCVCC  ·  "clotting" · 8 letters · shape CCVCCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • clothing ← cclothing · cllothing · clohting · clothhing · clothign · clothingg · clothinng · clothnig
  • clotting ← cclotting · cllotting · cloting · clotitng · clottign · clottingg · clottinng · clottnig

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "clothing" for "clotting" ever safe?
No. They differ by a single letter - h in “clothing” becomes t in “clotting”, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
Frequency check: "clothing" vs "clotting" - which ranks higher?
"clothing" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,155 in our English list, against #33,987 for "clotting". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

You've compared "clothing" and "clotting". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "clothing" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "clotting" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #297,041 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "clothing" and "clotting" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "clotting vs clouding". 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 #297,041 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