LohvsloughTell them apart

Quick tell: Loh is a name, lough is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“Loh” is a name and “lough” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#47,164
“Loh” frequency rank
#35,390
“lough” frequency rank
82554
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Loh lough
Definition A surname. A lake or long, narrow inlet, especially in Ireland.

Letter map: Loh vs lough

Shared letters muted; letters that set Loh and lough apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. Loh runs 3 letters (CVC) against lough's 5 (CVVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

3 ch
Loh
5 ch
lough

Part-of-speech tell for Loh / lough

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: Loh is aname and loughanoun. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 82554, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Loh is recorded at frequency rank #47,164, classified as aname. lough is at rank #35,390, tagged as anoun, pronounced /lɑx/.

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 82554, this pair ranks #15,531 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of Loh vs lough

Shared letters: hlo. Private to "Loh": -. Private to "lough": gu.

"Loh" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "lough" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • lough ← llough · loguh · louggh · loughh · louhg · luogh · olugh

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "Loh" and "lough" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Loh" is a name and "lough" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "Loh" or "lough" show up more?
"lough" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #35,390 in our English list, against #47,164 for "Loh". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "Loh" and "lough".

  • Full dictionary entry for "Loh" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "lough" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #15,531 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Loh" and "lough" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Loh vs LSC". 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 #15,531 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