lifesvsliveWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: lifes is a noun, live is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“lifes” is a noun and “live” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#31,638
“lifes” frequency rank
#263
“live” frequency rank
31901
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature lifes live
Definition plural of life To be alive; to have life.

Letter map: lifes vs live

Shared letters muted; letters that set lifes and live apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

5 ch
lifes
4 ch
live

Part-of-speech tell for lifes / live

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: lifes is anoun and liveaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 31901, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

lifes is recorded at frequency rank #31,638, classified as anoun. 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 31901, this pair ranks #342,276 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of lifes vs live

Shared letters: eil. Private to "lifes": fs. Private to "live": v.

"lifes" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "live" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • lifesilfes · liefs · lifess · liffes · lifse · llifes
  • liveilve · liev · livve · llive · lvie

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "lifes" and "live" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "lifes" is a noun and "live" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "lifes" or "live" show up more?
"live" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #263 in our English list, against #31,638 for "lifes". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pair "lifes" vs "live" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "lifes" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "live" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #342,276 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "lifes" and "live" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "lifes vs liken". 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 #342,276 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list