Which to use
“responsible” is an adjective and “responsibly” is an adverb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #1,407
- “responsible” frequency rank
- #21,339
- “responsibly” frequency rank
- 22746
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | responsible | responsibly |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Having the duty of taking care of something; answerable for an act performed or for its consequences; accountable; amenable, especially legally or politically. | In a responsible manner. |
Letter map: responsible vs responsibly
Shared letters muted; letters that set responsible and responsibly apart highlighted. Shared run: 10.
Part-of-speech tell for responsible / responsibly
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: responsible is anadjective and responsiblyanadverb. On the page they differ by a single letter - e in “responsible” becomes y in “responsibly”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 22746, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
responsible is recorded at frequency rank #1,407, classified as anadj, pronounced /ɹɪˈspɒn.sə.bəl/. responsibly is at rank #21,339, 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 22746, this pair ranks #414,322 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of responsible vs responsibly
Shared letters: beilnoprs. Private to "responsible": -. Private to "responsibly": y.
"responsible" · 11 letters · shape CVCCVCCVCCV · "responsibly" · 11 letters · shape CVCCVCCVCCV
Known mistypes of this pair
- responsible ← ersponsible · repsonsible · resopnsible · respnosible · responisble · responnsible · responsable · responsbile
- responsibly ← ersponsibly · repsonsibly · resopnsibly · respnosibly · responisbly · responnsibly · responsbily · responsibbly
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "responsible" for "responsibly" ever safe?
Which is more common, "responsible" or "responsibly"?
What to do next
You've compared "responsible" and "responsibly". Here's where to go from here.
- Full dictionary entry for "responsible" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "responsibly" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #414,322 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "responsible" and "responsibly" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "responsible vs responsive". 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 #414,322 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.