playersvsprayersTell them apart

Which to use

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

#507
“players” frequency rank
#5,900
“prayers” frequency rank
6407
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature players prayers
Definition plural of player plural of prayer

Where the eye mixes players and prayers

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 6 letters in sequence.

7 ch
players
7 ch
prayers

Look-alike desk: players vs prayers

A purely visual mix-up. players (/ˈpleɪɚz/) and prayers (/pɹɛɹz/) 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 a single letter - l in “players” becomes r in “prayers”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 6407, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

players is recorded at frequency rank #507, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈpleɪɚz/. prayers is at rank #5,900, tagged as anoun, pronounced /pɹɛɹz/.

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 6407, this pair ranks #511,556 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of players vs prayers

Shared letters: aeprsy. Private to "players": l. Private to "prayers": -.

"players" · 7 letters · shape CCVVVCC  ·  "prayers" · 7 letters · shape CCVVVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • playerslpayers · palyers · plaeyrs · playerrs · playerss · playesr · playres · playyers
  • prayersparyers · pprayers · praeyrs · prayerrs · prayerss · prayesr · prayres · prayyers

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "players" for "prayers" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (/ˈpleɪɚz/ versus /pɹɛɹz/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "players" or "prayers"?
"players" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #507 in our English list, against #5,900 for "prayers". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Eye-level mix-up between "players" and "prayers" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "players" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "prayers" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #511,556 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "players" and "prayers" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "placer vs players". 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 #511,556 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