culturalvsculturallyWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: cultural is a adjective, culturally is an adverb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“cultural” is an adjective and “culturally” is an adverb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#1,819
“cultural” frequency rank
#12,218
“culturally” frequency rank
14037
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cultural culturally
Definition Pertaining to culture. In a cultural way.

Letter map: cultural vs culturally

Shared letters muted; letters that set cultural and culturally apart highlighted. Shared run: 8. cultural runs 8 letters (CVCCVCVC) against culturally's 10 (CVCCVCVCCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

8 ch
cultural
10 ch
culturally

Role in the sentence - cultural and culturally

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: cultural is anadjective and culturallyanadverb. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “cultural” sits inside “culturally”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 14037, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cultural is recorded at frequency rank #1,819, classified as anadj, pronounced /ˈkʌlt͡ʃ(ʊ)əɹəl/. culturally is at rank #12,218, tagged as anadv.

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 14037, this pair ranks #472,424 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of cultural vs culturally

Shared letters: aclrtu. Private to "cultural": -. Private to "culturally": y.

"cultural" · 8 letters · shape CVCCVCVC  ·  "culturally" · 10 letters · shape CVCCVCVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • cultural ← ccultural · clutural · culltural · cultrual · culttural · cultuarl · culturall · culturla
  • culturally ← cculturally · cluturally · cullturally · cultrually · cultturally · cultuarlly · culturallyy · culturaly

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "cultural" and "culturally" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "cultural" is an adjective and "culturally" an adverb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "cultural" vs "culturally" - which ranks higher?
"cultural" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,819 in our English list, against #12,218 for "culturally". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Pair "cultural" vs "culturally" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "cultural" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "culturally" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #472,424 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cultural" and "culturally" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cultural vs cultured". 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 #472,424 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