mullingvsmuslinTell them apart

Which to use

“mulling” and “muslin” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#44,354
“mulling” frequency rank
#44,948
“muslin” frequency rank
89302
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature mulling muslin
Definition The act of one who mulls or thinks over something. Any of several varieties of thin cotton cloth.

Letter map: mulling vs muslin

Shared letters muted; letters that set mulling and muslin apart highlighted. Shared run: 5. mulling runs 7 letters (CVCCVCC) against muslin's 6 (CVCCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

7 ch
mulling
6 ch
muslin

Corpus notes: mulling and muslin

mulling and muslin are indexed as a confusable English pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 89302, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

mulling is recorded at frequency rank #44,354, classified as anoun. muslin is at rank #44,948, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈmʌz.lɪn/.

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 89302, this pair ranks #5,342 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of mulling vs muslin

Shared letters: ilmnu. Private to "mulling": g. Private to "muslin": s.

"mulling" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCC  ·  "muslin" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • mulling ← mluling · mmulling · mulilng · muling · mullign · mullingg · mullinng · mullnig
  • muslin ← mmuslin · msulin · mulsin · musiln · muslinn · musllin · muslni · musslin

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "mulling" and "muslin" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
In ordinary English text, does "mulling" or "muslin" show up more?
"mulling" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #44,354 in our English list, against #44,948 for "muslin". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "mulling" and "muslin".

  • Full dictionary entry for "mulling" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "muslin" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #5,342 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "mulling" and "muslin" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "musing vs muslin". 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 #5,342 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