goffvsgoodWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: goff is a noun, good is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#30,066
“goff” frequency rank
#78
“good” frequency rank
30144
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature goff good
Definition Obsolete form of golf (“ball game”). Of a person or an animal:

Letter map: goff vs good

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

4 ch
goff
4 ch
good

Grammar separator: goff vs good

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: goff is anoun and goodanadjective. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 30144, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

goff is recorded at frequency rank #30,066, classified as anoun. 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 30144, this pair ranks #357,005 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of goff vs good

Shared letters: go. Private to "goff": f. Private to "good": d.

"goff" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "good" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • goffgfof · ggoff · ogff
  • goodggood · godo · goodd · ogod

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "goff" and "good" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "goff" is a noun and "good" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "goff" or "good" show up more?
"good" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #78 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.

After this comparison

Pair "goff" vs "good" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "goff" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "good" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #357,005 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "goff" and "good" 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 #357,005 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