confessingvsconversingTell them apart

Quick tell: confessing is a verb, conversing is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“confessing” is a verb and “conversing” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#26,044
“confessing” frequency rank
#31,488
“conversing” frequency rank
57532
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature confessing conversing
Definition present participle and gerund of confess conversation

Letter map: confessing vs conversing

Shared letters muted; letters that set confessing and conversing apart highlighted. Shared run: 8.

10 ch
confessing
10 ch
conversing

Part-of-speech tell for confessing / conversing

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: confessing is averb and conversinganoun. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 57532, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

confessing is recorded at frequency rank #26,044, classified as averb, pronounced /kənˈfɛsɪŋ/. conversing is at rank #31,488, tagged as anoun.

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 57532, this pair ranks #118,708 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of confessing vs conversing

Shared letters: ceginos. Private to "confessing": f. Private to "conversing": rv.

"confessing" · 10 letters · shape CVCCVCCVCC  ·  "conversing" · 10 letters · shape CVCCVCCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • confessingcconfessing · cnofessing · cofnessing · conefssing · confesing · confesisng · confessign · confessingg
  • conversingcconversing · cnoversing · conevrsing · connversing · converisng · converrsing · conversign · conversingg

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "confessing" and "conversing" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "confessing" is a verb and "conversing" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "confessing" or "conversing" show up more?
"confessing" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #26,044 in our English list, against #31,488 for "conversing". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

You've compared "confessing" and "conversing". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "confessing" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "conversing" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #118,708 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "confessing" and "conversing" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "condensing vs conversing". 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 #118,708 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