dailyvsdarbyTell them apart

Quick tell: daily is a adjective, darby is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“daily” is an adjective and “darby” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#899
“daily” frequency rank
#23,229
“darby” frequency rank
24128
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature daily darby
Definition That occurs every day, or at least every working day. A specialized tool used to smooth and level the surface of wet concrete, consisting of a stiff wedge or triangle of wood or metal.

Letter map: daily vs darby

Shared letters muted; letters that set daily and darby apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. daily (CVVCV) and darby (CVCCV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

5 ch
daily
5 ch
darby

Role in the sentence - daily and darby

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: daily is anadjective and darbyanoun. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 24128, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

daily is recorded at frequency rank #899, classified as anadj, pronounced /ˈdeɪli/. darby is at rank #23,229, 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 24128, this pair ranks #404,235 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of daily vs darby

Shared letters: ady. Private to "daily": il. Private to "darby": br.

"daily" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV  ·  "darby" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • daily ← adily · dailly · dailyy · daiyl · daliy · ddaily · dialy
  • darby ← adrby · dabry · darbby · darbyy · darrby · daryb · ddarby · draby

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "daily" for "darby" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "daily" is an adjective and "darby" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "daily" or "darby" show up more?
"daily" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #899 in our English list, against #23,229 for "darby". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "daily" and "darby".

  • Full dictionary entry for "daily" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "darby" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #404,235 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "daily" and "darby" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "darby vs Darla". 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 #404,235 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