flutedvsfusedTell them apart

Quick tell: fluted is a adjective, fused is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“fluted” is an adjective and “fused” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#46,466
“fluted” frequency rank
#17,147
“fused” frequency rank
63613
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature fluted fused
Definition Having flutes or grooves, either for decoration or to trim weight. simple past and past participle of fuse

Letter map: fluted vs fused

Shared letters muted; letters that set fluted and fused apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. fluted runs 6 letters (CCVCVC) against fused's 5 (CVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
fluted
5 ch
fused

Role in the sentence - fluted and fused

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: fluted is anadjective and fusedaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 63613, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

fluted is recorded at frequency rank #46,466, classified as anadj. fused is at rank #17,147, tagged as averb, pronounced /fjuːzd/.

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 63613, this pair ranks #81,990 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of fluted vs fused

Shared letters: defu. Private to "fluted": lt. Private to "fused": s.

"fluted" · 6 letters · shape CCVCVC  ·  "fused" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • flutedffluted · flluted · fltued · fluetd · flutde · flutedd · flutted · fulted
  • fusedffused · fsued · fuesd · fusde · fusedd · fussed · ufsed

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "fluted" for "fused" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "fluted" is an adjective and "fused" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "fluted" vs "fused" - which ranks higher?
"fused" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #17,147 in our English list, against #46,466 for "fluted". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pair "fluted" vs "fused" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "fluted" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "fused" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #81,990 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "fluted" and "fused" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "flaked vs fluted". 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 #81,990 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