Which to use
“envious” is an adjective and “environs” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #21,788
- “envious” frequency rank
- #32,378
- “environs” frequency rank
- 54166
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | envious | environs |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Feeling or exhibiting envy; jealously desiring the excellence or good fortune of another; maliciously grudging. | plural of environ: the environment, the surroundings. |
Letter map: envious vs environs
Shared letters muted; letters that set envious and environs apart highlighted. Shared run: 6.
Part-of-speech tell for envious / environs
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: envious is anadjective and environsanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 54166, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
envious is recorded at frequency rank #21,788, classified as anadj, pronounced /ˈɛnviːəs/. environs is at rank #32,378, tagged as anoun.
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 54166, this pair ranks #143,166 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of envious vs environs
Shared letters: einosv. Private to "envious": u. Private to "environs": r.
"envious" · 7 letters · shape VCCVVVC · "environs" · 8 letters · shape VCCVCVCC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "envious" and "environs" mean the same thing in a sentence?
In ordinary English text, does "envious" or "environs" show up more?
After this comparison
Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "envious" and "environs".
- Full dictionary entry for "envious" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "environs" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #143,166 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 #143,166 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.