commingvscommonTell them apart

Quick tell: comming is a verb, common is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“comming” is a verb and “common” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#48,149
“comming” frequency rank
#631
“common” frequency rank
48780
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature comming common
Definition Obsolete spelling of coming, now an occasional misspelling. Mutual; shared by more than one.

Letter map: comming vs common

Shared letters muted; letters that set comming and common apart highlighted. Shared run: 5.

7 ch
comming
6 ch
common

Part-of-speech tell for comming / common

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: comming is averb and commonanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 48780, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

comming is recorded at frequency rank #48,149, classified as averb. common is at rank #631, tagged as anadj, pronounced /ˈkɒm.ən/.

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 48780, this pair ranks #189,835 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of comming vs common

Shared letters: cmno. Private to "comming": gi. Private to "common": -.

"comming" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCC  ·  "common" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • commingccomming · cmoming · comimng · commign · commingg · comminng · commnig · ocmming
  • commonccommon · cmomon · commno · commonn · comomn · comon · ocmmon

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "comming" and "common" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "comming" is a verb and "common" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "comming" or "common" show up more?
"common" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #631 in our English list, against #48,149 for "comming". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "comming" and "common".

  • Full dictionary entry for "comming" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "common" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #189,835 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "comming" and "common" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "coining vs comming". 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 #189,835 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