Which to use
“girls” is a noun and “girly” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #691
- “girls” frequency rank
- #21,526
- “girly” frequency rank
- 22217
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | girls | girly |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | plural of girl | Characteristic of a stereotypical girl, very effeminate, gentle; unmasculine. |
Where the eye mixes girls and girly
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. girls (CVCCC) and girly (CVCCV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.
Look-alike desk: girls vs girly
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: girls is /ɡɝlz/ while girly is /ˈɡɝli/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by a single letter - s in “girls” becomes y in “girly”, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 22217, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
girls is recorded at frequency rank #691, classified as anoun, pronounced /ɡɝlz/. girly is at rank #21,526, tagged as anadj, pronounced /ˈɡɝli/.
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 22217, this pair ranks #418,172 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of girls vs girly
Shared letters: gilr. Private to "girls": s. Private to "girly": y.
"girls" · 5 letters · shape CVCCC · "girly" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "girls" for "girly" ever safe?
Frequency check: "girls" vs "girly" - which ranks higher?
After this comparison
Eye-level mix-up between "girls" and "girly" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "girls" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "girly" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #418,172 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "girls" and "girly" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "girly vs grimly". 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 #418,172 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.