gladvsgoodWhat's the difference?

Which to use

“glad” and “good” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#1,342
“glad” frequency rank
#78
“good” frequency rank
1420
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature glad good
Definition Pleased; happy; gratified. Of a person or an animal:

Where the eye mixes glad and good

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

4 ch
glad
4 ch
good

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

A purely visual mix-up. glad (/ɡlæd/) and good (/ɡʊd/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 1420, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

glad is recorded at frequency rank #1,342, classified as anadj, pronounced /ɡlæd/. good is at rank #78, tagged as anadj, pronounced /ɡʊd/.

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 1420, this pair ranks #527,458 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of glad vs good

Shared letters: dg. Private to "glad": al. Private to "good": o.

"glad" · 4 letters · shape CCVC  ·  "good" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • gladgald · gglad · gladd · glda · gllad · lgad
  • goodggood · godo · goodd · ogod

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "glad" and "good" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (/ɡlæd/ versus /ɡʊd/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "glad" or "good"?
"good" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #78 in our English list, against #1,342 for "glad". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list