# costly vs courtly

> English confusable word pair

## The two words

### costly
*adjective · IPA /ˈkɒst.li/ · frequency rank #7,899*
Of high cost; expensive.

### courtly
*adjective · IPA /ˈkɔːtli/ · frequency rank #47,552*
Befitting of a royal court; reflecting the manners or behaviour of people at court.

## Source
Compiled from Wiktionary via kaikki.org (CC BY-SA). Data vintage: 2026-05-06.
Canonical page: https://plainspell.com/en/vs/costly-vs-courtly