Which to use
“louse” and “lute” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #47,167
- “louse” frequency rank
- #34,168
- “lute” frequency rank
- 81335
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | louse | lute |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | A small parasitic wingless insect of the order Psocodea. | A fretted stringed instrument, similar to the guitar, having a bowl-shaped body or soundbox; any of a wide variety of chordophones with a pear-shaped body and a neck whose upper surface is in the same plane as the soundboard, with strings along the neck and parallel to the soundboard. |
Where the eye mixes louse and lute
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. louse runs 5 letters (CVVCV) against lute's 4 (CVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Look-alike desk: louse vs lute
A purely visual mix-up. louse (/laʊs/) and lute (/l(j)uːt/) 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 81335, 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/. lute is at rank #34,168, tagged as anoun, pronounced /l(j)uːt/.
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 81335, this pair ranks #17,864 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of louse vs lute
Shared letters: elu. Private to "louse": os. Private to "lute": t.
"louse" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV · "lute" · 4 letters · shape CVCV
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "louse" and "lute" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Frequency check: "louse" vs "lute" - which ranks higher?
After this comparison
Eye-level mix-up between "louse" and "lute" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "louse" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "lute" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #17,864 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "louse" and "lute" 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 #17,864 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.