# shire vs shrew

> English confusable word pair

## The two words

### shire
*noun · IPA /ʃaɪə/ · frequency rank #15,700*
An administrative area or district between about the 5th to the 11th century, subdivided into hundreds or wapentakes and jointly governed by an ealdorman and a sheriff; also, a present-day area corresponding to such a historical district; a county; especially (England), a county having a name ending in -shire.

### shrew
*noun · IPA /ʃɹuː/ · frequency rank #39,560*
Any of numerous small, mouselike, chiefly nocturnal, mammals of the family Soricidae.

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