Which to use
“fair” is an adjective and “fairly” is an adverb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #1,104
- “fair” frequency rank
- #2,994
- “fairly” frequency rank
- 4098
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | fair | fairly |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Beautiful, of a pleasing appearance, with a pure and fresh quality. | In a fair manner; fair; not biased or skewed or favouring a certain party |
Where the eye mixes fair and fairly
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. fair runs 4 letters (CVVC) against fairly's 6 (CVVCCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Visual trap between fair and fairly
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: fair is /fɛə/ while fairly is /ˈfɛə(ɹ).li/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “fair” sits inside “fairly”, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs adverb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 4098, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
fair is recorded at frequency rank #1,104, classified as anadj, pronounced /fɛə/. fairly is at rank #2,994, tagged as anadv, pronounced /ˈfɛə(ɹ).li/.
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 4098, this pair ranks #519,992 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of fair vs fairly
Shared letters: afir. Private to "fair": -. Private to "fairly": ly.
"fair" · 4 letters · shape CVVC · "fairly" · 6 letters · shape CVVCCV
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "fair" for "fairly" ever safe?
In ordinary English text, does "fair" or "fairly" show up more?
Useful next steps
Eye-level mix-up between "fair" and "fairly" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "fair" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "fairly" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #519,992 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "fair" and "fairly" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "fair vs flail". 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 #519,992 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.