cocksvscorkyConfusable pair

Quick tell: cocks is a noun, corky is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“cocks” is a noun and “corky” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#15,780
“cocks” frequency rank
#48,156
“corky” frequency rank
63936
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cocks corky
Definition plural of cock Of wine, contaminated by a faulty or tainted cork.

Letter map: cocks vs corky

Shared letters muted; letters that set cocks and corky apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

5 ch
cocks
5 ch
corky

Part-of-speech tell for cocks / corky

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: cocks is anoun and corkyanadjective. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 63936, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cocks is recorded at frequency rank #15,780, classified as anoun, pronounced /kɒks/. corky is at rank #48,156, tagged as anadj.

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 63936, this pair ranks #80,334 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of cocks vs corky

Shared letters: cko. Private to "cocks": s. Private to "corky": ry.

"cocks" · 5 letters · shape CVCCC  ·  "corky" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • cocksccocks · ccoks · coccks · cockks · cockss · cocsk · cokcs · occks
  • corkyccorky · cokry · corkky · corkyy · corrky · coryk · croky · ocrky

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "cocks" and "corky" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "cocks" is a noun and "corky" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "cocks" or "corky" show up more?
"cocks" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #15,780 in our English list, against #48,156 for "corky". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pair "cocks" vs "corky" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "cocks" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "corky" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #80,334 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cocks" and "corky" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "corker vs corky". 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 #80,334 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