landvsleanedWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: land is a noun, leaned is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“land” is a noun and “leaned” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#608
“land” frequency rank
#16,954
“leaned” frequency rank
17562
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature land leaned
Definition The part of Earth which is not covered by oceans or other bodies of water. simple past and past participle of lean

Where the eye mixes land and leaned

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.

4 ch
land
6 ch
leaned

Visual trap between land and leaned

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: land is /lænd/ while leaned is /liːnd/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 2 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 17562, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

land is recorded at frequency rank #608, classified as anoun, pronounced /lænd/. leaned is at rank #16,954, tagged as averb, pronounced /liːnd/.

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 17562, this pair ranks #450,586 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of land vs leaned

Shared letters: adln. Private to "land": -. Private to "leaned": e.

"land" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "leaned" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • landalnd · ladn · landd · lannd · lland · lnad
  • leanedelaned · laened · leaend · leande · leanedd · leanned · lenaed · lleaned

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "land" and "leaned" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "land" is a noun and "leaned" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "land" or "leaned"?
"land" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #608 in our English list, against #16,954 for "leaned". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "land" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "leaned" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #450,586 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "land" and "leaned" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Laney vs leaned". 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 #450,586 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