Which to use
“Scully” is a name and “sully” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #21,649
- “Scully” frequency rank
- #25,227
- “sully” frequency rank
- 46876
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | Scully | sully |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | A surname from Irish. | To soil or stain; to dirty. |
Letter map: Scully vs sully
Shared letters muted; letters that set Scully and sully apart highlighted. Shared run: 5.
Part-of-speech tell for Scully / sully
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: Scully is aname and sullyaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 46876, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
Scully is recorded at frequency rank #21,649, classified as aname. sully is at rank #25,227, tagged as averb, pronounced /ˈsʌli/.
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 46876, this pair ranks #207,634 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of Scully vs sully
Shared letters: lsuy. Private to "Scully": c. Private to "sully": -.
"Scully" · 6 letters · shape CCVCCV · "sully" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "Scully" for "sully" ever safe?
In ordinary English text, does "Scully" or "sully" show up more?
After this comparison
Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "Scully" and "sully".
- Full dictionary entry for "Scully" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "sully" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #207,634 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "Scully" and "sully" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "sully vs surry". 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 #207,634 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.