policevspriceWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#471
“police” frequency rank
#592
“price” frequency rank
1063
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature police price
Definition A constituted body of officers representing the civil authority of government, empowered to maintain public order and safety, enforce the law, and prevent, detect, and investigate crime. The cost required to gain possession of something.

Where the eye mixes police and price

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.

6 ch
police
5 ch
price

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

A purely visual mix-up. police (/pəˈliːs/) and price (/pɹaɪs/) 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 1063, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

police is recorded at frequency rank #471, classified as anoun, pronounced /pəˈliːs/. price is at rank #592, tagged as anoun, pronounced /pɹaɪs/.

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 1063, this pair ranks #528,185 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of police vs price

Shared letters: ceip. Private to "police": lo. Private to "price": r.

"police" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV  ·  "price" · 5 letters · shape CCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • policeoplice · ploice · poilce · polcie · policce · poliec · pollice · ppolice
  • pricepirce · pprice · prcie · pricce · priec · prrice · rpice

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "police" and "price" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (/pəˈliːs/ versus /pɹaɪs/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "police" or "price"?
"police" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #471 in our English list, against #592 for "price". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list