LoewvslostWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: Loew is a name, lost is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“Loew” is a name and “lost” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#48,332
“Loew” frequency rank
#400
“lost” frequency rank
48732
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Loew lost
Definition A surname from German of German derivation (from Loewe or Löwe). simple past and past participle of lose

Letter map: Loew vs lost

Shared letters muted; letters that set Loew and lost apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
Loew
4 ch
lost

Part-of-speech tell for Loew / lost

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: Loew is aname and lostaverb. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 48732, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Loew is recorded at frequency rank #48,332, classified as aname. lost is at rank #400, tagged as averb, pronounced /lɒst/.

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 48732, this pair ranks #190,275 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of Loew vs lost

Shared letters: lo. Private to "Loew": ew. Private to "lost": st.

"Loew" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "lost" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Loewleow · lloew · loeww · olew
  • lostllost · losst · lostt · lsot · olst

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "Loew" for "lost" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Loew" is a name and "lost" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "Loew" or "lost" show up more?
"lost" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #400 in our English list, against #48,332 for "Loew". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "Loew" and "lost".

  • Full dictionary entry for "Loew" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "lost" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #190,275 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Loew" and "lost" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Loew vs lope". 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 #190,275 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