Which to use
“filly” is a noun and “fizzy” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #23,832
- “filly” frequency rank
- #36,144
- “fizzy” frequency rank
- 59976
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | filly | fizzy |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | A young female horse. | Containing bubbles. |
Where the eye mixes filly and fizzy
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. filly and fizzy follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Look-alike desk: filly vs fizzy
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: filly is /ˈfɪli/ while fizzy is /ˈfɪzi/. 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 (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 59976, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
filly is recorded at frequency rank #23,832, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈfɪli/. fizzy is at rank #36,144, tagged as anadj, pronounced /ˈfɪzi/.
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 59976, this pair ranks #102,936 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of filly vs fizzy
Shared letters: fiy. Private to "filly": l. Private to "fizzy": z.
"filly" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV · "fizzy" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "filly" for "fizzy" ever safe?
In ordinary English text, does "filly" or "fizzy" show up more?
What to do next
Eye-level mix-up between "filly" and "fizzy" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "filly" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "fizzy" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #102,936 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "filly" and "fizzy" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "fizzy vs frizzy". 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 #102,936 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.