guildvsgulWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#7,923
“guild” frequency rank
#34,905
“gul” frequency rank
42828
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature guild gul
Definition A group or association mainly of tradespeople made up of merchants, craftspeople, or artisans, particularly in the Middle Ages, established to oversee and protect their specific commercial interests and to provide mutual aid. Any medallionlike design on a Central or West Asian rug.

Letter map: guild vs gul

Shared letters muted; letters that set guild and gul apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

5 ch
guild
3 ch
gul

Corpus notes: guild and gul

guild and gul are indexed as a confusable English pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 42828, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

guild is recorded at frequency rank #7,923, classified as anoun, pronounced /ɡɪld/. gul is at rank #34,905, tagged as anoun.

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 42828, this pair ranks #245,735 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of guild vs gul

Shared letters: glu. Private to "guild": di. Private to "gul": -.

"guild" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC  ·  "gul" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • guildgguild · giuld · guidl · guildd · guilld · gulid · ugild

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "guild" and "gul" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They differ by 2 letter(s) in length, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
In ordinary English text, does "guild" or "gul" show up more?
"guild" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #7,923 in our English list, against #34,905 for "gul". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

You've compared "guild" and "gul". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "guild" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "gul" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #245,735 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "guild" and "gul" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "gib vs gul". 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 #245,735 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