commutingvscompetingWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#19,793
“commuting” frequency rank
#4,931
“competing” frequency rank
24724
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature commuting competing
Definition travel between home and workplace Being in the state of competition (often unintentionally).

Letter map: commuting vs competing

Shared letters muted; letters that set commuting and competing apart highlighted. Shared run: 7.

9 ch
commuting
9 ch
competing

Role in the sentence - commuting and competing

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: commuting is anoun and competinganadjective. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 24724, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

commuting is recorded at frequency rank #19,793, classified as anoun. competing is at rank #4,931, tagged as anadj, pronounced /kəmˈpiːtɪŋ/.

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 24724, this pair ranks #399,820 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of commuting vs competing

Shared letters: cgimnot. Private to "commuting": u. Private to "competing": ep.

"commuting" · 9 letters · shape CVCCVCVCC  ·  "competing" · 9 letters · shape CVCCVCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • commutingccommuting · cmomuting · commtuing · commuitng · commutign · commutingg · commutinng · commutnig
  • competingccompeting · cmopeting · comepting · commpeting · compeitng · competign · competingg · competinng

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "commuting" and "competing" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "commuting" is a noun and "competing" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "commuting" or "competing"?
"competing" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #4,931 in our English list, against #19,793 for "commuting". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "commuting" and "competing". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "commuting" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "competing" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #399,820 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "commuting" and "competing" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "comming vs commuting". 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 #399,820 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