Which to use
“leer” and “lex” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #47,726
- “leer” frequency rank
- #14,983
- “lex” frequency rank
- 62709
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | leer | lex |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | To look sideways or obliquely; now especially with sexual desire or malicious intent. | To perform lexical analysis; to convert a character stream to a token stream as a preliminary to parsing. |
Where the eye mixes leer and lex
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
A purely visual mix-up. leer (/lɪə/) and lex (/lɛks/) 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 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 62709, 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/. lex is at rank #14,983, tagged as averb, pronounced /lɛks/.
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 62709, this pair ranks #86,966 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of leer vs lex
Shared letters: el. Private to "leer": r. Private to "lex": x.
"leer" · 4 letters · shape CVVC · "lex" · 3 letters · shape CVC
Known mistypes of this pair
- leer ← eler · leerr · ler · lere · lleer