Which to use
“prohibitive” is an adjective and “prohibitively” is an adverb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #30,924
- “prohibitive” frequency rank
- #46,118
- “prohibitively” frequency rank
- 77042
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | prohibitive | prohibitively |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Tending to prohibit, preclude, or disallow. | In a prohibitive manner. |
Letter map: prohibitive vs prohibitively
Shared letters muted; letters that set prohibitive and prohibitively apart highlighted. Shared run: 11.
Part-of-speech tell for prohibitive / prohibitively
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: prohibitive is anadjective and prohibitivelyanadverb. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “prohibitive” sits inside “prohibitively”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 77042, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
prohibitive is recorded at frequency rank #30,924, classified as anadj, pronounced /pɹəˈhɪbɪtɪv/. prohibitively is at rank #46,118, tagged as anadv.
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 77042, this pair ranks #28,386 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of prohibitive vs prohibitively
Shared letters: behioprtv. Private to "prohibitive": -. Private to "prohibitively": ly.
"prohibitive" · 11 letters · shape CCVCVCVCVCV · "prohibitively" · 13 letters · shape CCVCVCVCVCVCV
Known mistypes of this pair
- prohibitive ← porhibitive · pprohibitive · prhoibitive · prohbiitive · prohhibitive · prohibbitive · prohibiitve · prohibitiev
- prohibitively ← porhibitively · pprohibitively · prhoibitively · prohbiitively · prohhibitively · prohibbitively · prohibiitvely · prohibitievly
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "prohibitive" and "prohibitively" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Frequency check: "prohibitive" vs "prohibitively" - which ranks higher?
Useful next steps
Pair "prohibitive" vs "prohibitively" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.
- Full dictionary entry for "prohibitive" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "prohibitively" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #28,386 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "prohibitive" and "prohibitively" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "prohibition vs prohibitive". 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 #28,386 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.