grieves vs grievous, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#48,784
“grieves” frequency rank: #22,986
“grievous” frequency rank: 71770
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	grieves	grievous
Definition	plural of grief	Causing grief, pain, or sorrow.

Where the spellings diverge

Shared letters are muted; the letters that actually set grieves and grievous apart are highlighted. They share 6 letters in sequence, which is exactly why the eye skips the difference.

7 ch

grieves

8 ch

grievous

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: grieves is /ɡɹiːvz/ while grievous is /ˈɡɹiː.vəs/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 71770, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

grieves is recorded at frequency rank #48,784, classified as anoun, pronounced /ɡɹiːvz/. grievous is at rank #22,986, tagged as anadj, pronounced /ˈɡɹiː.vəs/.

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 71770, this pair ranks #45,470 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of grieves vs grievous

Shared letters: egirsv. Private to "grieves": -. Private to "grievous": ou.

"grieves" · 7 letters · shape CCVVCVC · "grievous" · 8 letters · shape CCVVCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

grieves ← ggrieves · gireves · greives · grieevs · grievess · grievse · grievves · grivees
grievous ← ggrievous · girevous · greivous · grieovus · grievosu · grievouss · grievuos · grievvous

Frequency comparison

grieves#48,784

grievous#22,986

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "grieves" and "grievous" be used interchangeably?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "grieves" is a noun and "grievous" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

Which is more common, "grieves" or "grievous"?

"grievous" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #22,986 in our English list, against #48,784 for "grieves". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Remembering grieves vs grievous

The fastest way to pick the right one every time.

Check the role first: if you need a noun, it's “grieves”; for an adjective, it's “grievous”.
See each word in full, definition, IPA, etymology and its other confusables. Full “grieves” entry
Browse more pairs most likely to be confused. Most confusable