looneyvsloopedWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: looney is a adjective, looped is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“looney” is an adjective and “looped” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#28,981
“looney” frequency rank
#30,869
“looped” frequency rank
59850
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature looney looped
Definition Alternative spelling of loony. simple past and past participle of loop

Letter map: looney vs looped

Shared letters muted; letters that set looney and looped apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. looney (CVVCVV) and looped (CVVCVC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

6 ch
looney
6 ch
looped

Part-of-speech tell for looney / looped

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: looney is anadjective and loopedaverb. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 59850, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

looney is recorded at frequency rank #28,981, classified as anadj. looped is at rank #30,869, tagged as averb, pronounced /luːpt/.

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 59850, this pair ranks #103,724 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of looney vs looped

Shared letters: elo. Private to "looney": ny. Private to "looped": dp.

"looney" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVV  ·  "looped" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • looney ← llooney · loney · lonoey · looeny · looneyy · loonney · loonye · oloney
  • looped ← llooped · looepd · loopde · loopedd · loopped · loped · lopoed · oloped

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "looney" for "looped" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "looney" is an adjective and "looped" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "looney" vs "looped" - which ranks higher?
"looney" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #28,981 in our English list, against #30,869 for "looped". 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 "looney" and "looped".

  • Full dictionary entry for "looney" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "looped" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #103,724 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "looney" and "looped" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "looped 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 #103,724 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