Cui vs cusp, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“Cui” is a name and “cusp” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#39,761
“Cui” frequency rank: #27,112
“cusp” frequency rank: 66873
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	Cui	cusp
Definition	A surname from Mandarin.	A sharp point or pointed end.

Letter map: Cui vs cusp

Shared letters muted; letters that set Cui and cusp apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. Cui runs 3 letters (CVV) against cusp's 4 (CVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

3 ch

Cui

4 ch

cusp

Role in the sentence - Cui and cusp

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: Cui is aname and cuspanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 66873, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Cui is recorded at frequency rank #39,761, classified as aname. cusp is at rank #27,112, tagged as anoun, pronounced /kʌsp/.

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 66873, this pair ranks #66,028 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of Cui vs cusp

Shared letters: cu. Private to "Cui": i. Private to "cusp": ps.

"Cui" · 3 letters · shape CVV · "cusp" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

cusp ← ccusp · csup · cuspp · cussp · ucsp

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "Cui" for "cusp" ever safe?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Cui" is a name and "cusp" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

Frequency check: "Cui" vs "cusp" - which ranks higher?

"cusp" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #27,112 in our English list, against #39,761 for "Cui". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "Cui" and "cusp". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "Cui" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "cusp" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #66,028 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"Cui" and "cusp" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "CGT vs Cui". 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 #66,028 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.