practisingvspraisingWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: practising is a adjective, praising is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“practising” is an adjective and “praising” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#17,213
“practising” frequency rank
#13,040
“praising” frequency rank
30253
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature practising praising
Definition Engaged in the practice of some activity or profession. present participle and gerund of praise

Letter map: practising vs praising

Shared letters muted; letters that set practising and praising apart highlighted. Shared run: 8.

10 ch
practising
8 ch
praising

Role in the sentence - practising and praising

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: practising is anadjective and praisingaverb. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 30253, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

practising is recorded at frequency rank #17,213, classified as anadj. praising is at rank #13,040, tagged as averb, pronounced /ˈpɹeɪzɪŋ/.

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 30253, this pair ranks #356,143 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of practising vs praising

Shared letters: aginprs. Private to "practising": ct. Private to "praising": -.

"practising" · 10 letters · shape CCVCCVCVCC  ·  "praising" · 8 letters · shape CCVVCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • practisingparctising · ppractising · pracctising · pracitsing · practiisng · practisign · practisingg · practisinng
  • praisingparising · ppraising · praiisng · praisign · praisingg · praisinng · praisnig · praissing

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "practising" for "praising" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "practising" is an adjective and "praising" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "practising" vs "praising" - which ranks higher?
"praising" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #13,040 in our English list, against #17,213 for "practising". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "practising" and "praising". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "practising" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "praising" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #356,143 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "practising" and "praising" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "praising vs prancing". 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 #356,143 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