Which to use
“ear” is a noun and “early” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #3,425
- “ear” frequency rank
- #354
- “early” frequency rank
- 3779
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | ear | early |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | The organ of hearing, consisting of the pinna or auricle, auditory canal, eardrum, malleus, incus, stapes and cochlea. | At a time in advance of the usual or expected event. |
Letter map: ear vs early
Shared letters muted; letters that set ear and early apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.
Role in the sentence - ear and early
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: ear is anoun and earlyanadjective. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “ear” sits inside “early”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 3779, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
ear is recorded at frequency rank #3,425, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈɪə̯/. early is at rank #354, tagged as anadj.
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 3779, this pair ranks #521,023 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of ear vs early
Shared letters: aer. Private to "ear": -. Private to "early": ly.
"ear" · 3 letters · shape VVC · "early" · 5 letters · shape VVCCV
Known mistypes of this pair
- early ← aerly · ealry · earlly · earlyy · earrly · earyl · eraly
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "ear" and "early" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Which is more common, "ear" or "early"?
What to do next
You've compared "ear" and "early". Here's where to go from here.
- Full dictionary entry for "ear" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "early" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #521,023 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "ear" and "early" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ear vs Eri". 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 #521,023 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.