Which to use
“leer” is a verb and “lees” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #47,726
- “leer” frequency rank
- #27,538
- “lees” frequency rank
- 75264
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | leer | lees |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | To look sideways or obliquely; now especially with sexual desire or malicious intent. | The sediment that settles during fermentation of beverages, consisting of dead yeast and precipitated parts of the fruit. |
Where the eye mixes leer and lees
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. leer and lees follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Visual trap between leer and lees
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: leer is /lɪə/ while lees is /liːz/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by a single letter - r in “leer” becomes s in “lees”, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 75264, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
leer is recorded at frequency rank #47,726, classified as averb, pronounced /lɪə/. 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 75264, this pair ranks #33,674 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of leer vs lees
Shared letters: el. Private to "leer": r. Private to "lees": s.
"leer" · 4 letters · shape CVVC · "lees" · 4 letters · shape CVVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "leer" for "lees" ever safe?
Which is more common, "leer" or "lees"?
What to do next
Eye-level mix-up between "leer" and "lees" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "leer" 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 #33,674 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "leer" and "lees" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "leer 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 #33,674 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.