gulvsgullyWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#34,905
“gul” frequency rank
#25,079
“gully” frequency rank
59984
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature gul gully
Definition Any medallionlike design on a Central or West Asian rug. A trench, ravine or narrow channel which was worn by water flow, especially on a hillside.

Letter map: gul vs gully

Shared letters muted; letters that set gul and gully apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. gul runs 3 letters (CVC) against gully's 5 (CVCCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

3 ch
gul
5 ch
gully

Spelling & dictionary notes on gul vs gully

gul and gully 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 extra letter(s) - “gul” sits inside “gully”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 59984, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

gul is recorded at frequency rank #34,905, classified as anoun. gully is at rank #25,079, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈɡʌli/.

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 59984, this pair ranks #102,889 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of gul vs gully

Shared letters: glu. Private to "gul": -. Private to "gully": y.

"gul" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "gully" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • gully ← ggully · gluly · gullyy · gulyl

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "gul" and "gully" be used interchangeably?
No. They differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “gul” sits inside “gully”, 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 "gul" or "gully" show up more?
"gully" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #25,079 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 "gul" and "gully". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "gul" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "gully" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #102,889 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "gul" and "gully" 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 #102,889 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