Which to use
“love” and “lyre” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #147
- “love” frequency rank
- #46,595
- “lyre” frequency rank
- 46742
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | love | lyre |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | A deep caring for the existence of another. | An ancient stringed musical instrument (a yoke lute chordophone) of Greek origin, consisting of two arms extending from a body to a crossbar (a yoke), and strings, parallel to the soundboard, connecting the body to the yoke. |
Where the eye mixes love and lyre
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence. love and lyre follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Visual trap between love and lyre
A purely visual mix-up. love (/lʌv/) and lyre (/ˈlaɪ.ə/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 46742, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
love is recorded at frequency rank #147, classified as anoun, pronounced /lʌv/. lyre is at rank #46,595, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈlaɪ.ə/.
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 46742, this pair ranks #208,903 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of love vs lyre
Shared letters: el. Private to "love": ov. Private to "lyre": ry.
"love" · 4 letters · shape CVCV · "lyre" · 4 letters · shape CVCV
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "love" and "lyre" mean the same thing in a sentence?
In ordinary English text, does "love" or "lyre" show up more?
What to do next
Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.
- Full dictionary entry for "love" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "lyre" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #208,903 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "love" and "lyre" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "lope vs lyre". 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 #208,903 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.