Which to use
“love” is a noun and “loved” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #147
- “love” frequency rank
- #1,088
- “loved” frequency rank
- 1235
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | love | loved |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | A deep caring for the existence of another. | simple past and past participle of love |
Where the eye mixes love and loved
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: love is /lʌv/ while loved is /lʌvd/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “love” sits inside “loved”, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 1235, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
love is recorded at frequency rank #147, classified as anoun, pronounced /lʌv/. loved is at rank #1,088, tagged as averb, pronounced /lʌvd/.
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 1235, this pair ranks #527,818 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of love vs loved
Shared letters: elov. Private to "love": -. Private to "loved": d.
"love" · 4 letters · shape CVCV · "loved" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC