# shad vs shadow

> English confusable word pair

## The two words

### shad
*noun · IPA /ʃæd/ · frequency rank #35,509*
Any one of several species of food fishes that make up the genus Alosa in the family Clupeidae, to which the herrings also belong; river herring.

### shadow
*noun · IPA /ˈʃædəʊ/ · frequency rank #3,395*
A dark image projected onto a surface where light (or other radiation) is blocked by the shade of an object.

## Source
Compiled from Wiktionary via kaikki.org (CC BY-SA). Data vintage: 2026-05-06.
Canonical page: https://plainspell.com/en/vs/shad-vs-shadow