Which to use
“louse” and “love” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #47,167
- “louse” frequency rank
- #147
- “love” frequency rank
- 47314
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | louse | love |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | A small parasitic wingless insect of the order Psocodea. | A deep caring for the existence of another. |
Where the eye mixes louse and love
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. louse runs 5 letters (CVVCV) against love's 4 (CVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Visual trap between louse and love
A purely visual mix-up. louse (/laʊs/) and love (/lʌv/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 47314, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
louse is recorded at frequency rank #47,167, classified as anoun, pronounced /laʊs/. love is at rank #147, tagged as anoun, pronounced /lʌv/.
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 47314, this pair ranks #203,585 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of louse vs love
Shared letters: elo. Private to "louse": su. Private to "love": v.
"louse" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV · "love" · 4 letters · shape CVCV
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "louse" and "love" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Frequency check: "louse" vs "love" - which ranks higher?
Useful next steps
Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.
- Full dictionary entry for "louse" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "love" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #203,585 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "louse" and "love" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "lope vs louse". 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 #203,585 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.