Which to use
“feline” is an adjective and “felony” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #24,749
- “feline” frequency rank
- #10,047
- “felony” frequency rank
- 34796
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | feline | felony |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Of or pertaining to cats. | A serious criminal offense, which, under United States federal law, is punishable by a term of imprisonment of not less than one year or by the death penalty in the most serious offenses. |
Where the eye mixes feline and felony
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. feline and felony follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Visual trap between feline and felony
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: feline is /ˈfiːlaɪn/ while felony is /ˈfɛləni/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 34796, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
feline is recorded at frequency rank #24,749, classified as anadj, pronounced /ˈfiːlaɪn/. felony is at rank #10,047, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈfɛləni/.
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 34796, this pair ranks #317,618 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of feline vs felony
Shared letters: efln. Private to "feline": i. Private to "felony": oy.
"feline" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV · "felony" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "feline" for "felony" ever safe?
Frequency check: "feline" vs "felony" - which ranks higher?
Useful next steps
Eye-level mix-up between "feline" and "felony" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "feline" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "felony" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #317,618 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "feline" and "felony" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "feline vs felling". 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 #317,618 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.