sikvssillWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: sik is a adjective, sill is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“sik” is an adjective and “sill” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#40,893
“sik” frequency rank
#29,086
“sill” frequency rank
69979
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature sik sill
Definition Alternative form of sick (“cool, excellent”). A breast wall; window breast; horizontal brink which forms the base of a window.

Letter map: sik vs sill

Shared letters muted; letters that set sik and sill apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. sik runs 3 letters (CVC) against sill's 4 (CVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

3 ch
sik
4 ch
sill

Role in the sentence - sik and sill

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: sik is anadjective and sillanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 69979, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

sik is recorded at frequency rank #40,893, classified as anadj. sill is at rank #29,086, tagged as anoun, pronounced /sɪl/.

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 69979, this pair ranks #52,388 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of sik vs sill

Shared letters: is. Private to "sik": k. Private to "sill": l.

"sik" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "sill" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • sill ← isll · slil · ssill

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "sik" for "sill" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "sik" is an adjective and "sill" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "sik" or "sill" show up more?
"sill" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #29,086 in our English list, against #40,893 for "sik". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "sik" and "sill". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "sik" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "sill" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #52,388 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "sik" and "sill" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Sif vs sik". 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 #52,388 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