ogrevsoldeTell them apart

Quick tell: ogre is a noun, olde is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“ogre” is a noun and “olde” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#25,506
“ogre” frequency rank
#37,124
“olde” frequency rank
62630
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ogre olde
Definition A type of brutish giant from folk tales that eats human flesh. Archaic spelling of old.

Letter map: ogre vs olde

Shared letters muted; letters that set ogre and olde apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
ogre
4 ch
olde

Grammar separator: ogre vs olde

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: ogre is anoun and oldeanadjective. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 62630, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ogre is recorded at frequency rank #25,506, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈəʊ.ɡə/. olde is at rank #37,124, tagged as anadj.

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 62630, this pair ranks #87,423 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of ogre vs olde

Shared letters: eo. Private to "ogre": gr. Private to "olde": dl.

"ogre" · 4 letters · shape VCCV  ·  "olde" · 4 letters · shape VCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • ogreoger · oggre · ogrre · orge
  • oldeoldde · ollde

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "ogre" for "olde" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "ogre" is a noun and "olde" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "ogre" or "olde" show up more?
"ogre" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #25,506 in our English list, against #37,124 for "olde". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

You've compared "ogre" and "olde". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "ogre" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "olde" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #87,423 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ogre" and "olde" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "olde vs ould". 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 #87,423 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