Which to use
“race” and “rape” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #882
- “race” frequency rank
- #3,127
- “rape” frequency rank
- 4009
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | race | rape |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | A contest between people, animals, vehicles, etc. where the goal is to be the first to reach some objective. | The act of forcing sex upon another person without their consent or against their will; originally coitus forced by a man on a woman, but now generally any sex act forced by any person upon another person, regardless of gender; by extension, any non-consensual sex act forced on, perpetrated by, or forced to penetrate any being. |
Where the eye mixes race and rape
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
A purely visual mix-up. race (/ɹeɪs/) and rape (/ˈɹeɪ̯p/) 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 - c in “race” becomes p in “rape”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 4009, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
race is recorded at frequency rank #882, classified as anoun, pronounced /ɹeɪs/. rape is at rank #3,127, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈɹeɪ̯p/.
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 4009, this pair ranks #520,293 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of race vs rape
Shared letters: aer. Private to "race": c. Private to "rape": p.
"race" · 4 letters · shape CVCV · "rape" · 4 letters · shape CVCV