goodvsgroConfusable pair

Which to use

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

#78
“good” frequency rank
#42,164
“gro” frequency rank
42242
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature good gro
Definition Of a person or an animal: Disgusting, unpleasant; gross.

Where the eye mixes good and gro

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

4 ch
good
3 ch
gro

Look-alike desk: good vs gro

A purely visual mix-up. good (/ɡʊd/) and gro (/ˈɡrəʊ/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 42242, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

good is recorded at frequency rank #78, classified as anadj, pronounced /ɡʊd/. gro is at rank #42,164, tagged as anadj, pronounced /ˈɡrəʊ/.

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 42242, this pair ranks #251,014 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of good vs gro

Shared letters: go. Private to "good": d. Private to "gro": r.

"good" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "gro" · 3 letters · shape CCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • goodggood · godo · goodd · ogod

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "good" for "gro" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (/ɡʊd/ versus /ˈɡrəʊ/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "good" or "gro"?
"good" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #78 in our English list, against #42,164 for "gro". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "good" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "gro" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #251,014 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "good" and "gro" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Gere vs gro". 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 #251,014 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