Which to use
“friend” is a noun and “friendly” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #420
- “friend” frequency rank
- #2,300
- “friendly” frequency rank
- 2720
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | friend | friendly |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | A person, typically someone other than a family member, spouse or lover, whose company one enjoys and towards whom one feels affection. | Generally warm, approachable and easy to relate with in character. |
Where the eye mixes friend and friendly
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 6 letters in sequence.
Visual trap between friend and friendly
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: friend is /fɹɛnd/ while friendly is /ˈfɹɛnd.li/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “friend” sits inside “friendly”, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 2720, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
friend is recorded at frequency rank #420, classified as anoun, pronounced /fɹɛnd/. friendly is at rank #2,300, tagged as anadj, pronounced /ˈfɹɛnd.li/.
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 2720, this pair ranks #524,220 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of friend vs friendly
Shared letters: definr. Private to "friend": -. Private to "friendly": ly.
"friend" · 6 letters · shape CCVVCC · "friendly" · 8 letters · shape CCVVCCCV
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "friend" for "friendly" ever safe?
In ordinary English text, does "friend" or "friendly" show up more?
What to do next
Eye-level mix-up between "friend" and "friendly" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "friend" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "friendly" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #524,220 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "friend" and "friendly" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Frieda vs friend". 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 #524,220 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.