Which to use
“furnish” is a noun and “furnished” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #24,162
- “furnish” frequency rank
- #12,052
- “furnished” frequency rank
- 36214
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | furnish | furnished |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Material used to create an engineered product. | simple past and past participle of furnish |
Where the eye mixes furnish and furnished
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 7 letters in sequence. furnish runs 7 letters (CVCCVCC) against furnished's 9 (CVCCVCCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Look-alike desk: furnish vs furnished
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: furnish is /ˈfɝnɪʃ/ while furnished is /ˈfɝnɪʃt/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “furnish” sits inside “furnished”, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 36214, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
furnish is recorded at frequency rank #24,162, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈfɝnɪʃ/. furnished is at rank #12,052, tagged as averb, pronounced /ˈfɝnɪʃt/.
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 36214, this pair ranks #305,137 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of furnish vs furnished
Shared letters: fhinrsu. Private to "furnish": -. Private to "furnished": de.
"furnish" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCC · "furnished" · 9 letters · shape CVCCVCCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "furnish" for "furnished" ever safe?
Frequency check: "furnish" vs "furnished" - which ranks higher?
Useful next steps
Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.
- Full dictionary entry for "furnish" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "furnished" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #305,137 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "furnish" and "furnished" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Furness vs furnish". 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 #305,137 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.