gleevsgoneWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: glee is a noun, gone is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“glee” is a noun and “gone” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#15,177
“glee” frequency rank
#693
“gone” frequency rank
15870
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature glee gone
Definition Joy; happiness; great delight, especially from one's own good fortune or from another's misfortune. past participle of go

Where the eye mixes glee and gone

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

4 ch
glee
4 ch
gone

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: glee is /ɡliː/ while gone is /ɡɒn/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 15870, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

glee is recorded at frequency rank #15,177, classified as anoun, pronounced /ɡliː/. gone is at rank #693, tagged as averb, pronounced /ɡɒn/.

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 15870, this pair ranks #461,289 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of glee vs gone

Shared letters: eg. Private to "glee": l. Private to "gone": no.

"glee" · 4 letters · shape CCVV  ·  "gone" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • gleegele · gglee · gle · gllee · lgee
  • goneggone · gnoe · goen · gonne · ogne

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "glee" and "gone" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "glee" is a noun and "gone" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "glee" or "gone"?
"gone" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #693 in our English list, against #15,177 for "glee". 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