Which to use
“love” and “loves” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #147
- “love” frequency rank
- #2,220
- “loves” frequency rank
- 2367
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | love | loves |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | A deep caring for the existence of another. | plural of love |
Where the eye mixes love and loves
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
A purely visual mix-up. love (/lʌv/) and loves (/lʌvz/) 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 extra letter(s) - “love” sits inside “loves”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 2367, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
love is recorded at frequency rank #147, classified as anoun, pronounced /lʌv/. loves is at rank #2,220, tagged as anoun, pronounced /lʌvz/.
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 2367, this pair ranks #525,159 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of love vs loves
Shared letters: elov. Private to "love": -. Private to "loves": s.
"love" · 4 letters · shape CVCV · "loves" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC