Which to use
“lawn” and “laws” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #7,358
- “lawn” frequency rank
- #1,370
- “laws” frequency rank
- 8728
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | lawn | laws |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Ground (generally in front of or around a house) covered with grass kept closely mown. | plural of law |
Where the eye mixes lawn and laws
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. lawn and laws follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Visual trap between lawn and laws
A purely visual mix-up. lawn (/lɔːn/) and laws (/lɔːz/) 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 - n in “lawn” becomes s in “laws”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 8728, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
lawn is recorded at frequency rank #7,358, classified as anoun, pronounced /lɔːn/. laws is at rank #1,370, tagged as anoun, pronounced /lɔːz/.
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 8728, this pair ranks #501,028 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of lawn vs laws
Shared letters: alw. Private to "lawn": n. Private to "laws": s.
"lawn" · 4 letters · shape CVCC · "laws" · 4 letters · shape CVCC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "lawn" for "laws" ever safe?
Frequency check: "lawn" vs "laws" - which ranks higher?
After this comparison
Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.
- Full dictionary entry for "lawn" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "laws" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #501,028 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "lawn" and "laws" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "lav vs lawn". 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 #501,028 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.