Which to use
“heady” and “heavy” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #31,593
- “heady” frequency rank
- #1,170
- “heavy” frequency rank
- 32763
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | heady | heavy |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Intoxicating or stupefying. | Having great weight. |
Where the eye mixes heady and heavy
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. heady and heavy follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Look-alike desk: heady vs heavy
A purely visual mix-up. heady (/ˈhɛdi/) and heavy (/ˈhɛv.i/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by a single letter - d in “heady” becomes v in “heavy”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 32763, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
heady is recorded at frequency rank #31,593, classified as anadj, pronounced /ˈhɛdi/. heavy is at rank #1,170, tagged as anadj, pronounced /ˈhɛv.i/.
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 32763, this pair ranks #335,116 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of heady vs heavy
Shared letters: aehy. Private to "heady": d. Private to "heavy": v.
"heady" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV · "heavy" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "heady" for "heavy" ever safe?
Frequency check: "heady" vs "heavy" - which ranks higher?
After this comparison
Eye-level mix-up between "heady" and "heavy" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "heady" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "heavy" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #335,116 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "heady" and "heavy" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "heady vs Henny". 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 #335,116 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.