parkvspawWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#717
“park” frequency rank
#15,469
“paw” frequency rank
16186
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature park paw
Definition An area of land set aside for environment preservation or recreation. The soft foot of a mammal or other animal, generally a quadruped, that has claws or nails; comparable to a human hand or foot.

Where the eye mixes park and paw

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

4 ch
park
3 ch
paw

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

A purely visual mix-up. park (/pɑɹk/) and paw (/pɔː/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 16186, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

park is recorded at frequency rank #717, classified as anoun, pronounced /pɑɹk/. paw is at rank #15,469, tagged as anoun, pronounced /pɔː/.

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 16186, this pair ranks #459,350 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of park vs paw

Shared letters: ap. Private to "park": kr. Private to "paw": w.

"park" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "paw" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • parkaprk · pakr · parkk · parrk · ppark · prak

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "park" and "paw" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (/pɑɹk/ versus /pɔː/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "park" or "paw"?
"park" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #717 in our English list, against #15,469 for "paw". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list