Which to use
“indiscriminate” is an adjective and “indiscriminately” is an adverb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #28,954
- “indiscriminate” frequency rank
- #29,692
- “indiscriminately” frequency rank
- 58646
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | indiscriminate | indiscriminately |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Not marked by discrimination or discernment; (by extension) confused, promiscuous. | In an indiscriminate manner. |
Letter map: indiscriminate vs indiscriminately
Shared letters muted; letters that set indiscriminate and indiscriminately apart highlighted. Shared run: 14.
Role in the sentence - indiscriminate and indiscriminately
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: indiscriminate is anadjective and indiscriminatelyanadverb. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “indiscriminate” sits inside “indiscriminately”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 58646, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
indiscriminate is recorded at frequency rank #28,954, classified as anadj, pronounced /ɪn.dɪsˈkɹɪm.ɪn.ət/. indiscriminately is at rank #29,692, tagged as anadv.
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 58646, this pair ranks #111,209 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of indiscriminate vs indiscriminately
Shared letters: acdeimnrst. Private to "indiscriminate": -. Private to "indiscriminately": ly.
"indiscriminate" · 14 letters · shape VCCVCCCVCVCVCV · "indiscriminately" · 16 letters · shape VCCVCCCVCVCVCVCV
Known mistypes of this pair
- indiscriminate ← idniscriminate · inddiscriminate · indicsriminate · indisccriminate · indiscirminate · indiscriimnate · indiscrimiante · indiscriminaet
- indiscriminately ← idniscriminately · inddiscriminately · indicsriminately · indisccriminately · indiscirminately · indiscriimnately · indiscrimiantely · indiscriminaetly
Frequently Asked Questions
Can "indiscriminate" and "indiscriminately" be used interchangeably?
Which is more common, "indiscriminate" or "indiscriminately"?
What to do next
You've compared "indiscriminate" and "indiscriminately". Here's where to go from here.
- Full dictionary entry for "indiscriminate" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "indiscriminately" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #111,209 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- 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 #111,209 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.