embervsemirTell them apart

Which to use

“ember” and “emir” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#30,019
“ember” frequency rank
#27,134
“emir” frequency rank
57153
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ember emir
Definition A piece of coal or wood glowing by heat; a hot coal. A prince, commander or other leader or ruler in an Islamic nation.

Where the eye mixes ember and emir

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

5 ch
ember
4 ch
emir

Visual trap between ember and emir

A purely visual mix-up. ember (/ˈɛm.bə/) and emir (/ɛˈmɪə(ɹ)/) 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 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 57153, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ember is recorded at frequency rank #30,019, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈɛm.bə/. emir is at rank #27,134, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ɛˈmɪə(ɹ)/.

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 57153, this pair ranks #121,252 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of ember vs emir

Shared letters: emr. Private to "ember": b. Private to "emir": i.

"ember" · 5 letters · shape VCCVC  ·  "emir" · 4 letters · shape VCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • emberebmer · embber · emberr · embre · emebr · meber
  • emireimr · emirr · emmir · emri

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "ember" and "emir" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (/ˈɛm.bə/ versus /ɛˈmɪə(ɹ)/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "ember" or "emir"?
"emir" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #27,134 in our English list, against #30,019 for "ember". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Eye-level mix-up between "ember" and "emir" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "ember" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "emir" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #121,252 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ember" and "emir" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "emir 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 #121,252 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