Which to use
“ship” and “shit” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #1,254
- “ship” frequency rank
- #316
- “shit” frequency rank
- 1570
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | ship | shit |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | A water-borne vessel generally larger than a boat. | Usually solid excretory product evacuated from the bowels; feces. |
Where the eye mixes ship and shit
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.
Look-alike desk: ship vs shit
A purely visual mix-up. ship (/ʃɪp/) and shit (/ʃɪt/) 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 - p in “ship” becomes t in “shit”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 1570, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
ship is recorded at frequency rank #1,254, classified as anoun, pronounced /ʃɪp/. shit is at rank #316, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ʃɪt/.
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 1570, this pair ranks #527,155 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of ship vs shit
Shared letters: his. Private to "ship": p. Private to "shit": t.
"ship" · 4 letters · shape CCVC · "shit" · 4 letters · shape CCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "ship" and "shit" mean the same thing in a sentence?
In ordinary English text, does "ship" or "shit" show up more?
After this comparison
Eye-level mix-up between "ship" and "shit" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "ship" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "shit" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #527,155 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "ship" and "shit" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ship vs Sif". 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 #527,155 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.