lovevslowWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: love is a noun, low is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“love” is a noun and “low” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#147
“love” frequency rank
#468
“low” frequency rank
615
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature love low
Definition A deep caring for the existence of another. Situated close to, or even below, the ground or another normal reference plane; not high or lofty.

Where the eye mixes love and low

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

4 ch
love
3 ch
low

Look-alike desk: love vs low

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: love is /lʌv/ while low is /ˈləʊ/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 615, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

love is recorded at frequency rank #147, classified as anoun, pronounced /lʌv/. low is at rank #468, tagged as anadj, pronounced /ˈləʊ/.

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 615, this pair ranks #529,116 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of love vs low

Shared letters: lo. Private to "love": ev. Private to "low": w.

"love" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "low" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • lovellove · loev · lovve · lvoe · olve

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "love" for "low" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "love" is a noun and "low" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "love" or "low" show up more?
"love" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #147 in our English list, against #468 for "low". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Eye-level mix-up between "love" and "low" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "love" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "low" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #529,116 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "love" and "low" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "low vs LSC". 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 #529,116 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