Which to use
“guess” is a verb and “gutless” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #694
- “guess” frequency rank
- #48,789
- “gutless” frequency rank
- 49483
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | guess | gutless |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | To reach a partly (or totally) unconfirmed conclusion; to engage in conjecture; to speculate. | Without a gut. |
Letter map: guess vs gutless
Shared letters muted; letters that set guess and gutless apart highlighted. Shared run: 5. guess runs 5 letters (CVVCC) against gutless's 7 (CVCCVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Role in the sentence - guess and gutless
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: guess is averb and gutlessanadjective. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 49483, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
guess is recorded at frequency rank #694, classified as averb, pronounced /ɡɛs/. gutless is at rank #48,789, tagged as anadj.
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 49483, this pair ranks #183,150 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of guess vs gutless
Shared letters: egsu. Private to "guess": -. Private to "gutless": lt.
"guess" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC · "gutless" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Can "guess" and "gutless" be used interchangeably?
Frequency check: "guess" vs "gutless" - which ranks higher?
Useful next steps
Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "guess" and "gutless".
- Full dictionary entry for "guess" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "gutless" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #183,150 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "guess" and "gutless" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "godless vs gutless". 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 #183,150 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.