Which to use
“earth” is a name and “eth” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #923
- “earth” frequency rank
- #22,077
- “eth” frequency rank
- 23000
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | earth | eth |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Alternative letter-case form of Earth; our planet, third out from the Sun. | A letter (capital Ð, small ð) introduced into Old English to represent its dental fricative, then not distinguished from the letter thorn, no longer used in English but still in modern use in Icelandic, the IPA and other phonetic alphabets to represent the voiced dental fricative "th" sound as in the English word then. The letter is also used in Faroese, but is generally silent in that language. |
Where the eye mixes earth and eth
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. earth runs 5 letters (VVCCC) against eth's 3 (VCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Look-alike desk: earth vs eth
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: earth is /ɜːθ/ while eth is /ɛð/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 2 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (name vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 23000, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
earth is recorded at frequency rank #923, classified as aname, pronounced /ɜːθ/. eth is at rank #22,077, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ɛð/.
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 23000, this pair ranks #412,458 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of earth vs eth
Shared letters: eht. Private to "earth": ar. Private to "eth": -.
"earth" · 5 letters · shape VVCCC · "eth" · 3 letters · shape VCC
Known mistypes of this pair
- earth ← aerth · earht · earrth · earthh · eartth · eatrh · erath
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "earth" for "eth" ever safe?
In ordinary English text, does "earth" or "eth" show up more?
What to do next
Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.
- Full dictionary entry for "earth" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "eth" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #412,458 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "earth" and "eth" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Eri vs eth". 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 #412,458 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.