Which to use
“corky” is an adjective and “cray” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #48,156
- “corky” frequency rank
- #28,500
- “cray” frequency rank
- 76656
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | corky | cray |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Of wine, contaminated by a faulty or tainted cork. | A crayfish or lobster. |
Letter map: corky vs cray
Shared letters muted; letters that set corky and cray apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. corky runs 5 letters (CVCCV) against cray's 4 (CCVV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Part-of-speech tell for corky / cray
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: corky is anadjective and crayanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 76656, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
corky is recorded at frequency rank #48,156, classified as anadj. cray is at rank #28,500, tagged as anoun, pronounced /kɹæɪ/.
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 76656, this pair ranks #29,491 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of corky vs cray
Shared letters: cry. Private to "corky": ko. Private to "cray": a.
"corky" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV · "cray" · 4 letters · shape CCVV
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "corky" for "cray" ever safe?
Frequency check: "corky" vs "cray" - which ranks higher?
Useful next steps
Pair "corky" vs "cray" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.
- Full dictionary entry for "corky" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "cray" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #29,491 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "corky" and "cray" 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 #29,491 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.