Which to use
“delightful” is an adjective and “delightfully” is an adverb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #10,033
- “delightful” frequency rank
- #32,347
- “delightfully” frequency rank
- 42380
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | delightful | delightfully |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Pleasant; pleasing, bringing enjoyment, satisfaction, or pleasure. | In a delightful manner. |
Letter map: delightful vs delightfully
Shared letters muted; letters that set delightful and delightfully apart highlighted. Shared run: 10. delightful runs 10 letters (CVCVCCCCVC) against delightfully's 12 (CVCVCCCCVCCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Role in the sentence - delightful and delightfully
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: delightful is anadjective and delightfullyanadverb. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “delightful” sits inside “delightfully”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 42380, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
delightful is recorded at frequency rank #10,033, classified as anadj, pronounced /dəˈlaɪt.fl̩/. delightfully is at rank #32,347, 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 42380, this pair ranks #249,770 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of delightful vs delightfully
Shared letters: defghiltu. Private to "delightful": -. Private to "delightfully": y.
"delightful" · 10 letters · shape CVCVCCCCVC · "delightfully" · 12 letters · shape CVCVCCCCVCCV
Known mistypes of this pair
- delightful ← ddelightful · deilghtful · delgihtful · deligghtful · delighftul · delighhtful · delightfful · delightflu
- delightfully ← ddelightfully · deilghtfully · delgihtfully · deligghtfully · delighftully · delighhtfully · delightffully · delightfluly
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "delightful" and "delightfully" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Frequency check: "delightful" vs "delightfully" - which ranks higher?
Useful next steps
Pair "delightful" vs "delightfully" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.
- Full dictionary entry for "delightful" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "delightfully" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #249,770 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- 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 #249,770 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.