Which to use
“office” and “offing” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #389
- “office” frequency rank
- #46,667
- “offing” frequency rank
- 47056
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | office | offing |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | A ceremonial duty or service, particularly | The area of the sea in which a ship can be seen in the distance from land, excluding the parts nearest the shore, and beyond the anchoring ground. |
Where the eye mixes office and offing
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
A purely visual mix-up. office (/ˈɒf.ɪs/) and offing (/ˈɒfɪŋ/) 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 47056, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
office is recorded at frequency rank #389, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈɒf.ɪs/. offing is at rank #46,667, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈɒfɪŋ/.
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 47056, this pair ranks #205,965 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of office vs offing
Shared letters: fio. Private to "office": ce. Private to "offing": gn.
"office" · 6 letters · shape VCCVCV · "offing" · 6 letters · shape VCCVCC