Which to use
“injure” and “insure” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #20,392
- “injure” frequency rank
- #17,164
- “insure” frequency rank
- 37556
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | injure | insure |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | To wound or cause physical harm to a living creature. | To provide for compensation if some specified risk occurs. Often agreed by policy (contract) to offer financial compensation in case of an accident, theft or other undesirable event. |
Where the eye mixes injure and insure
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. injure and insure follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (VCCVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Look-alike desk: injure vs insure
A purely visual mix-up. injure (/ˈɪn.d͡ʒɚ/) and insure (/ɪnˈʃɔː(ɹ)/) 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 - j in “injure” becomes s in “insure”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 37556, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
injure is recorded at frequency rank #20,392, classified as averb, pronounced /ˈɪn.d͡ʒɚ/. insure is at rank #17,164, tagged as averb, pronounced /ɪnˈʃɔː(ɹ)/.
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 37556, this pair ranks #293,564 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of injure vs insure
Shared letters: einru. Private to "injure": j. Private to "insure": s.
"injure" · 6 letters · shape VCCVCV · "insure" · 6 letters · shape VCCVCV
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "injure" and "insure" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Which is more common, "injure" or "insure"?
Useful next steps
Eye-level mix-up between "injure" and "insure" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "injure" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "insure" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #293,564 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "injure" and "insure" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "injure vs Inoue". 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 #293,564 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.