exvsexonWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#1,633
“ex” frequency rank
#49,909
“exon” frequency rank
51542
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ex exon
Definition The name of the Latin script letter X/x. An officer of the King's Body Guard of the Yeomen of the Guard.

Letter map: ex vs exon

Shared letters muted; letters that set ex and exon apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

2 ch
ex
4 ch
exon

Spelling & dictionary notes on ex vs exon

ex and exon are indexed as a confusable English pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “ex” sits inside “exon”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 51542, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ex is recorded at frequency rank #1,633, classified as anoun, pronounced /ɛks/. exon is at rank #49,909, 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 51542, this pair ranks #164,597 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of ex vs exon

Shared letters: ex. Private to "ex": -. Private to "exon": no.

"ex" · 2 letters · shape VC  ·  "exon" · 4 letters · shape VCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • exoneoxn · exno · exonn · xeon

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "ex" for "exon" ever safe?
No. They differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “ex” sits inside “exon”, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
Frequency check: "ex" vs "exon" - which ranks higher?
"ex" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,633 in our English list, against #49,909 for "exon". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "ex" and "exon".

  • Full dictionary entry for "ex" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "exon" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #164,597 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ex" and "exon" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Enos vs exon". 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 #164,597 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