Which to use
“melting” is an adjective and “mulling” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #9,631
- “melting” frequency rank
- #44,354
- “mulling” frequency rank
- 53985
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | melting | mulling |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Which is melting, dissolving or liquefying. | The act of one who mulls or thinks over something. |
Letter map: melting vs mulling
Shared letters muted; letters that set melting and mulling apart highlighted. Shared run: 5. melting and mulling follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCCVCC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Part-of-speech tell for melting / mulling
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: melting is anadjective and mullinganoun. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 53985, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
melting is recorded at frequency rank #9,631, classified as anadj, pronounced /ˈmɛltɪŋ/. mulling is at rank #44,354, tagged as anoun.
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 53985, this pair ranks #144,635 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of melting vs mulling
Shared letters: gilmn. Private to "melting": et. Private to "mulling": u.
"melting" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCC · "mulling" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "melting" and "mulling" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Which is more common, "melting" or "mulling"?
After this comparison
You've compared "melting" and "mulling". Here's where to go from here.
- Full dictionary entry for "melting" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "mulling" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #144,635 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "melting" and "mulling" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "mulling vs musing". 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 #144,635 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.