Which to use
“filly” and “frills” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #23,832
- “filly” frequency rank
- #32,813
- “frills” frequency rank
- 56645
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | filly | frills |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | A young female horse. | plural of frill |
Where the eye mixes filly and frills
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. filly runs 5 letters (CVCCV) against frills's 6 (CCVCCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Look-alike desk: filly vs frills
A purely visual mix-up. filly (/ˈfɪli/) and frills (/fɹɪlz/) 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 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 56645, 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/. frills is at rank #32,813, tagged as anoun, pronounced /fɹɪlz/.
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 56645, this pair ranks #124,766 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of filly vs frills
Shared letters: fil. Private to "filly": y. Private to "frills": rs.
"filly" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV · "frills" · 6 letters · shape CCVCCC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "filly" for "frills" ever safe?
Frequency check: "filly" vs "frills" - which ranks higher?
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 "frills" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #124,766 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "filly" and "frills" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Fells vs frills". 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 #124,766 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.