Which to use
“life” is a noun and “live” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #134
- “life” frequency rank
- #263
- “live” frequency rank
- 397
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | life | live |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | The state of organisms preceding their death, characterized by biological processes such as metabolism and reproduction and distinguishing them from inanimate objects; the state of being alive and living. | To be alive; to have life. |
Where the eye mixes life and live
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: life is /laɪf/ while live is /lɪv/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by a single letter - f in “life” becomes v in “live”, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 397, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
life is recorded at frequency rank #134, classified as anoun, pronounced /laɪf/. live is at rank #263, tagged as averb, pronounced /lɪv/.
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 397, this pair ranks #529,480 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of life vs live
Shared letters: eil. Private to "life": f. Private to "live": v.
"life" · 4 letters · shape CVCV · "live" · 4 letters · shape CVCV