favourvsflourWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#4,235
“favour” frequency rank
#7,135
“flour” frequency rank
11370
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature favour flour
Definition British standard spelling of favor. Powder obtained by grinding or milling cereal grains, especially wheat, or other foodstuffs such as soybeans and potatoes, and used to bake bread, cakes, and pastry.

Letter map: favour vs flour

Shared letters muted; letters that set favour and flour apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. favour runs 6 letters (CVCVVC) against flour's 5 (CCVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
favour
5 ch
flour

Spelling & dictionary notes on favour vs flour

favour and flour 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 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 11370, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

favour is recorded at frequency rank #4,235, classified as anoun. flour is at rank #7,135, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈflaʊ̯.ə/.

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 11370, this pair ranks #487,428 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of favour vs flour

Shared letters: foru. Private to "favour": av. Private to "flour": l.

"favour" · 6 letters · shape CVCVVC  ·  "flour" · 5 letters · shape CCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • favour ← afvour · faovur · favoru · favourr · favuor · favvour · ffavour · fvaour
  • flour ← fflour · fllour · floru · flourr · fluor · folur · lfour

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "favour" for "flour" ever safe?
No. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
Frequency check: "favour" vs "flour" - which ranks higher?
"favour" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #4,235 in our English list, against #7,135 for "flour". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pair "favour" vs "flour" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "favour" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "flour" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #487,428 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "favour" and "flour" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "flour vs fou". 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 #487,428 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