FLOPSvsflownWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: FLOPS is a noun, flown is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“FLOPS” is a noun and “flown” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#19,600
“FLOPS” frequency rank
#9,179
“flown” frequency rank
28779
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature FLOPS flown
Definition One flop per second. past participle of fly

Letter map: FLOPS vs flown

Shared letters muted; letters that set FLOPS and flown apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. FLOPS and flown follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CCVCC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

5 ch
FLOPS
5 ch
flown

Part-of-speech tell for FLOPS / flown

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: FLOPS is anoun and flownaverb. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 28779, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

FLOPS is recorded at frequency rank #19,600, classified as anoun. flown is at rank #9,179, tagged as averb, pronounced /ˈfləʊn/.

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 28779, this pair ranks #368,387 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of FLOPS vs flown

Shared letters: flo. Private to "FLOPS": ps. Private to "flown": nw.

"FLOPS" · 5 letters · shape CCVCC  ·  "flown" · 5 letters · shape CCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • FLOPS ← fflops · fllops · flopps · flopss · flosp · flpos · folps · lfops
  • flown ← fflown · fllown · flonw · flownn · flowwn · flwon · folwn · lfown

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "FLOPS" for "flown" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "FLOPS" is a noun and "flown" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "FLOPS" or "flown"?
"flown" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #9,179 in our English list, against #19,600 for "FLOPS". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "FLOPS" and "flown".

  • Full dictionary entry for "FLOPS" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "flown" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #368,387 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "FLOPS" and "flown" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "flog vs FLOPS". 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 #368,387 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list