Which to use
“grail” and “gravy” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #15,823
- “grail” frequency rank
- #15,418
- “gravy” frequency rank
- 31241
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | grail | gravy |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | The Holy Grail. | A thick sauce made from the fat or juices that come out from meat or vegetables as they are being cooked. |
Where the eye mixes grail and gravy
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.
Look-alike desk: grail vs gravy
A purely visual mix-up. grail (/ɡɹeɪl/) and gravy (/ˈɡɹeɪvi/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 31241, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
grail is recorded at frequency rank #15,823, classified as anoun, pronounced /ɡɹeɪl/. gravy is at rank #15,418, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈɡɹeɪvi/.
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 31241, this pair ranks #347,817 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of grail vs gravy
Shared letters: agr. Private to "grail": il. Private to "gravy": vy.
"grail" · 5 letters · shape CCVVC · "gravy" · 5 letters · shape CCVCV
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "grail" and "gravy" mean the same thing in a sentence?
In ordinary English text, does "grail" or "gravy" show up more?
Useful next steps
Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.
- Full dictionary entry for "grail" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "gravy" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #347,817 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "grail" and "gravy" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "gravy vs guava". 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 #347,817 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.