fearlessvsfearlesslyWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: fearless is a adjective, fearlessly is an adverb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“fearless” is an adjective and “fearlessly” is an adverb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#13,916
“fearless” frequency rank
#42,638
“fearlessly” frequency rank
56554
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature fearless fearlessly
Definition Without fear. In a fearless manner; without fear.

Letter map: fearless vs fearlessly

Shared letters muted; letters that set fearless and fearlessly apart highlighted. Shared run: 8.

8 ch
fearless
10 ch
fearlessly

Part-of-speech tell for fearless / fearlessly

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: fearless is anadjective and fearlesslyanadverb. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “fearless” sits inside “fearlessly”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 56554, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

fearless is recorded at frequency rank #13,916, classified as anadj, pronounced /ˈfɪɹləs/. fearlessly is at rank #42,638, tagged as anadv.

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 56554, this pair ranks #125,433 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of fearless vs fearlessly

Shared letters: aeflrs. Private to "fearless": -. Private to "fearlessly": y.

"fearless" · 8 letters · shape CVVCCVCC  ·  "fearlessly" · 10 letters · shape CVVCCVCCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • fearlessefarless · faerless · fealress · fearelss · fearles · fearlless · fearlses · fearrless
  • fearlesslyefarlessly · faerlessly · fealressly · fearelssly · fearleslsy · fearlesly · fearlesslly · fearlesslyy

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "fearless" and "fearlessly" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "fearless" is an adjective and "fearlessly" an adverb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "fearless" vs "fearlessly" - which ranks higher?
"fearless" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #13,916 in our English list, against #42,638 for "fearlessly". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pair "fearless" vs "fearlessly" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "fearless" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "fearlessly" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #125,433 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "fearless" and "fearlessly" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "fearlessly vs flawlessly". 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 #125,433 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