goffvsgoneWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#30,066
“goff” frequency rank
#693
“gone” frequency rank
30759
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature goff gone
Definition Obsolete form of golf (“ball game”). past participle of go

Letter map: goff vs gone

Shared letters muted; letters that set goff and gone apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
goff
4 ch
gone

Part-of-speech tell for goff / gone

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: goff is anoun and goneaverb. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 30759, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

goff is recorded at frequency rank #30,066, classified as anoun. 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 30759, this pair ranks #351,801 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of goff vs gone

Shared letters: go. Private to "goff": f. Private to "gone": en.

"goff" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "gone" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • goffgfof · ggoff · ogff
  • goneggone · gnoe · goen · gonne · ogne

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "goff" and "gone" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "goff" is a noun and "gone" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "goff" vs "gone" - which ranks higher?
"gone" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #693 in our English list, against #30,066 for "goff". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "goff" and "gone".

  • Full dictionary entry for "goff" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "gone" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #351,801 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "goff" and "gone" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "goer vs goff". 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 #351,801 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list