Which to use
“murdering” is a noun and “murmuring” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #10,892
- “murdering” frequency rank
- #38,984
- “murmuring” frequency rank
- 49876
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | murdering | murmuring |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | The act of committing murder. | present participle and gerund of murmur |
Letter map: murdering vs murmuring
Shared letters muted; letters that set murdering and murmuring apart highlighted. Shared run: 7. murdering and murmuring follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCCVCVCC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Part-of-speech tell for murdering / murmuring
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: murdering is anoun and murmuringaverb. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 49876, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
murdering is recorded at frequency rank #10,892, classified as anoun. murmuring is at rank #38,984, tagged as averb.
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 49876, this pair ranks #179,462 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of murdering vs murmuring
Shared letters: gimnru. Private to "murdering": de. Private to "murmuring": -.
"murdering" · 9 letters · shape CVCCVCVCC · "murmuring" · 9 letters · shape CVCCVCVCC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "murdering" for "murmuring" ever safe?
Which is more common, "murdering" or "murmuring"?
After this comparison
Pair "murdering" vs "murmuring" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.
- Full dictionary entry for "murdering" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "murmuring" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #179,462 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "murdering" and "murmuring" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "murdering vs muttering". 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 #179,462 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.