shovevssovWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: shove is a verb, sov is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“shove” is a verb and “sov” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#11,965
“shove” frequency rank
#47,919
“sov” frequency rank
59884
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature shove sov
Definition To push, especially roughly or with force. Pound sterling.

Letter map: shove vs sov

Shared letters muted; letters that set shove and sov apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

5 ch
shove
3 ch
sov

Part-of-speech tell for shove / sov

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: shove is averb and sovanoun. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 59884, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

shove is recorded at frequency rank #11,965, classified as averb, pronounced /ʃʌv/. sov is at rank #47,919, tagged as anoun.

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 59884, this pair ranks #103,508 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of shove vs sov

Shared letters: osv. Private to "shove": eh. Private to "sov": -.

"shove" · 5 letters · shape CCVCV  ·  "sov" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • shovehsove · shhove · shoev · shovve · shvoe · sohve · sshove

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "shove" for "sov" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "shove" is a verb and "sov" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "shove" or "sov"?
"shove" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #11,965 in our English list, against #47,919 for "sov". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Pair "shove" vs "sov" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "shove" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "sov" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #103,508 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "shove" and "sov" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Sif vs sov". 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 #103,508 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list