Seal or seel?
seal is a noun meaning “A pinniped (Pinnipedia), particularly an earless seal (true seal) or eared seal”; seel is a noun meaning “Good fortune; happiness; bliss”. They sound the same (/siːl/). In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) seal is about 170 times as common as seel.
What is the difference between seal and seel?
| seal | seel | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | noun, verb | adjective, noun, verb |
| Meaning | A pinniped (Pinnipedia), particularly an earless seal (true seal) or eared seal To hunt seals A stamp used to impress a design on a soft substance such as wax | UKGood fortune; happiness; bliss UKOpportunity; time; season To sew together the eyelids of a young hawk |
| Example | The seals in the harbor looked better than they smelled | the seel of the day |
| Forms | seals | seels |
| Pronunciation | /siːl/ /siː.əl/ | /siːl/ |
| In writing | 20 times per million words | about once in every 9 million words |
Sources: seal and seel in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of seal and seel
seal
- 1
A pinniped (Pinnipedia), particularly an earless seal (true seal) or eared seal
The seals in the harbor looked better than they smelled
- 2
To hunt seals
They're organizing a protest against sealing
- 3
A stamp used to impress a design on a soft substance such as wax
- 4
To place a seal on (a document)
- 5
To tie up animals (especially cattle) in their stalls
- 6
Ellipsis of Navy SEAL (“member of the Sea, Air, Land unit”)
- 7
An impression of such stamp on wax, paper or other material used for sealing
- 8
To mark with a stamp, as an evidence of standard exactness, legal size, or merchantable quality
to seal weights and measures
seel
- 1
UKGood fortune; happiness; bliss
- 2
To sew together the eyelids of a young hawk
- 3
UKOpportunity; time; season
the seel of the day
- 4
To blind
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, seal or seel?
seal appears 20 times per million words; seel about once in every 9 million words.
seal 20 times per million wordsseel about once in every 9 million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search seal vs seel?
“seal vs seel” is searched about 1,600 times a month on Google and 60 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“seel vs seal”, “seal or seel”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.