lassvslaudWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#26,145
“lass” frequency rank
#47,152
“laud” frequency rank
73297
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature lass laud
Definition A girl; also (by extension), a young woman. Glorification or praise.

Where the eye mixes lass and laud

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

4 ch
lass
4 ch
laud

Why the eye confuses lass with laud

A purely visual mix-up. lass (/læs/) and laud (/lɔːd/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 73297, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

lass is recorded at frequency rank #26,145, classified as anoun, pronounced /læs/. laud is at rank #47,152, tagged as anoun, pronounced /lɔːd/.

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 73297, this pair ranks #40,086 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of lass vs laud

Shared letters: al. Private to "lass": s. Private to "laud": du.

"lass" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "laud" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • lassalss · llass · lsas
  • laudladu · laudd · llaud · luad

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "lass" for "laud" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (/læs/ versus /lɔːd/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "lass" vs "laud" - which ranks higher?
"lass" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #26,145 in our English list, against #47,152 for "laud". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Eye-level mix-up between "lass" and "laud" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "lass" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "laud" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #40,086 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "lass" and "laud" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "laud vs lav". 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 #40,086 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