commingvscopyingWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#48,149
“comming” frequency rank
#11,524
“copying” frequency rank
59673
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature comming copying
Definition Obsolete spelling of coming, now an occasional misspelling. present participle and gerund of copy

Letter map: comming vs copying

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

7 ch
comming
7 ch
copying

Spelling & dictionary notes on comming vs copying

comming and copying 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 share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 59673, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

comming is recorded at frequency rank #48,149, classified as averb. copying is at rank #11,524, tagged as averb, pronounced /ˈkɑpiɪŋ/.

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 59673, this pair ranks #104,744 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of comming vs copying

Shared letters: cgino. Private to "comming": m. Private to "copying": py.

"comming" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCC  ·  "copying" · 7 letters · shape CVCVVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • commingccomming · cmoming · comimng · commign · commingg · comminng · commnig · ocmming
  • copyingccopying · copiyng · coppying · copyign · copyingg · copyinng · copynig · copyying

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "comming" for "copying" ever safe?
No. They share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
In ordinary English text, does "comming" or "copying" show up more?
"copying" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #11,524 in our English list, against #48,149 for "comming". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "comming" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "copying" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #104,744 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "comming" and "copying" 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 #104,744 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