Which to use
“narc” is a noun and “near” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #46,645
- “narc” frequency rank
- #514
- “near” frequency rank
- 47159
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | narc | near |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | A police officer or federal agent assigned to or engaging in illegal narcotics control. | Physically close. |
Where the eye mixes narc and near
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: narc is /ˈnɑːk/ while near is /nɪə/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 47159, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
narc is recorded at frequency rank #46,645, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈnɑːk/. near is at rank #514, tagged as anadj, pronounced /nɪə/.
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 47159, this pair ranks #205,029 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of narc vs near
Shared letters: anr. Private to "narc": c. Private to "near": e.
"narc" · 4 letters · shape CVCC · "near" · 4 letters · shape CVVC