Which to use
“felling” is a noun and “fooling” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #38,837
- “felling” frequency rank
- #19,339
- “fooling” frequency rank
- 58176
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | felling | fooling |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | The act by which something is felled. | present participle and gerund of fool |
Letter map: felling vs fooling
Shared letters muted; letters that set felling and fooling apart highlighted. Shared run: 5.
Part-of-speech tell for felling / fooling
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: felling is anoun and foolingaverb. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 58176, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
felling is recorded at frequency rank #38,837, classified as anoun. fooling is at rank #19,339, tagged as averb, pronounced /ˈfuːlɪŋ/.
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 58176, this pair ranks #114,369 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of felling vs fooling
Shared letters: fgiln. Private to "felling": e. Private to "fooling": o.
"felling" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCC · "fooling" · 7 letters · shape CVVCVCC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "felling" and "fooling" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Which is more common, "felling" or "fooling"?
Useful next steps
Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "felling" and "fooling".
- Full dictionary entry for "felling" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "fooling" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #114,369 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "felling" and "fooling" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "felling vs Fuelling". 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 #114,369 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.