Which to use
“delight” and “delights” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #7,440
- “delight” frequency rank
- #19,308
- “delights” frequency rank
- 26748
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | delight | delights |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Joy; pleasure. | plural of delight |
Where the eye mixes delight and delights
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 7 letters in sequence. delight runs 7 letters (CVCVCCC) against delights's 8 (CVCVCCCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Look-alike desk: delight vs delights
A purely visual mix-up. delight (/dəˈlaɪt/) and delights (/dɪˈlaɪts/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “delight” sits inside “delights”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 26748, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
delight is recorded at frequency rank #7,440, classified as anoun, pronounced /dəˈlaɪt/. delights is at rank #19,308, tagged as anoun, pronounced /dɪˈlaɪts/.
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 26748, this pair ranks #384,361 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of delight vs delights
Shared letters: deghilt. Private to "delight": -. Private to "delights": s.
"delight" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCCC · "delights" · 8 letters · shape CVCVCCCC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "delight" and "delights" mean the same thing in a sentence?
In ordinary English text, does "delight" or "delights" show up more?
What to do next
Eye-level mix-up between "delight" and "delights" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "delight" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "delights" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #384,361 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "delight" and "delights" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "delighted vs delights". 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 #384,361 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.