Which to use
“leed” and “lees” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #40,780
- “leed” frequency rank
- #27,538
- “lees” frequency rank
- 68318
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | leed | lees |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Language; tongue. | The sediment that settles during fermentation of beverages, consisting of dead yeast and precipitated parts of the fruit. |
Where the eye mixes leed and lees
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.
Visual trap between leed and lees
A purely visual mix-up. leed (/liːd/) and lees (/liːz/) 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 - d in “leed” becomes s in “lees”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 68318, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
leed is recorded at frequency rank #40,780, classified as anoun, pronounced /liːd/. lees is at rank #27,538, tagged as anoun, pronounced /liːz/.
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 68318, this pair ranks #59,403 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of leed vs lees
Shared letters: el. Private to "leed": d. Private to "lees": s.
"leed" · 4 letters · shape CVVC · "lees" · 4 letters · shape CVVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "leed" and "lees" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Frequency check: "leed" vs "lees" - which ranks higher?
What to do next
Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.
- Full dictionary entry for "leed" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "lees" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #59,403 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "leed" and "lees" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "leed vs lel". 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 #59,403 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.