goinvsgoingWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#7,694
“goin” frequency rank
#122
“going” frequency rank
7816
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature goin going
Definition Pronunciation spelling of going. present participle and gerund of go

Letter map: goin vs going

Shared letters muted; letters that set goin and going apart highlighted. Shared run: 4.

4 ch
goin
5 ch
going

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

goin and going are indexed as a confusable English pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “goin” sits inside “going”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 7816, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

goin is recorded at frequency rank #7,694, classified as averb. going is at rank #122, tagged as averb, pronounced /ˈɡəʊ.ɪŋ/.

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 7816, this pair ranks #505,458 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of goin vs going

Shared letters: gino. Private to "goin": -. Private to "going": -.

"goin" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "going" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • goinggoin · gion · goinn · goni · ogin
  • goingggoing · giong · goign · goingg · goinng · gonig · oging

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "goin" and "going" be used interchangeably?
No. They differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “goin” sits inside “going”, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
Which is more common, "goin" or "going"?
"going" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #122 in our English list, against #7,694 for "goin". 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