goodvsgothTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#78
“good” frequency rank
#21,529
“goth” frequency rank
21607
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature good goth
Definition Of a person or an animal: A punk-derived subculture of people who predominantly dress in black, associated with mournful music and attitudes.

Where the eye mixes good and goth

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

4 ch
good
4 ch
goth

Look-alike desk: good vs goth

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: good is /ɡʊd/ while goth is /ɡɒθ/. 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 (adjective vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 21607, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

good is recorded at frequency rank #78, classified as anadj, pronounced /ɡʊd/. goth is at rank #21,529, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ɡɒθ/.

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 21607, this pair ranks #422,665 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of good vs goth

Shared letters: go. Private to "good": d. Private to "goth": ht.

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

Known mistypes of this pair

  • goodggood · godo · goodd · ogod
  • gothggoth · goht · gothh · gotth · gtoh · ogth

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "good" for "goth" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "good" is an adjective and "goth" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "good" vs "goth" - which ranks higher?
"good" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #78 in our English list, against #21,529 for "goth". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "good" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "goth" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #422,665 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "good" and "goth" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "goer vs goth". 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 #422,665 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