Which to use
“filly” and “fly” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #23,832
- “filly” frequency rank
- #1,827
- “fly” frequency rank
- 25659
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | filly | fly |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | A young female horse. | Any insect of the order Diptera; characterized by having two wings (except for some wingless species), also called true flies. |
Where the eye mixes filly and fly
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.
Visual trap between filly and fly
A purely visual mix-up. filly (/ˈfɪli/) and fly (/flaɪ/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 25659, 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/. fly is at rank #1,827, tagged as anoun, pronounced /flaɪ/.
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 25659, this pair ranks #392,611 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of filly vs fly
Shared letters: fly. Private to "filly": i. Private to "fly": -.
"filly" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV · "fly" · 3 letters · shape CCV
Known mistypes of this pair
- filly ← ffilly · fillyy · fily · filyl · flily · iflly
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "filly" for "fly" ever safe?
In ordinary English text, does "filly" or "fly" show up more?
After this comparison
Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.
- Full dictionary entry for "filly" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "fly" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #392,611 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "filly" and "fly" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "feely vs filly". 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 #392,611 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.