singingvssinglingWhat's the difference?

Which to use

“singing” and “singling” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#2,559
“singing” frequency rank
#41,884
“singling” frequency rank
44443
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature singing singling
Definition The act of using the voice to produce musical sounds; vocalizing. Liquid collected from the wash, or fermented wort; low wine.

Letter map: singing vs singling

Shared letters muted; letters that set singing and singling apart highlighted. Shared run: 7.

7 ch
singing
8 ch
singling

Spelling & dictionary notes on singing vs singling

singing and singling are indexed as a confusable English pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 44443, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

singing is recorded at frequency rank #2,559, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈsɪŋɪŋ/. singling is at rank #41,884, 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 44443, this pair ranks #230,527 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of singing vs singling

Shared letters: gins. Private to "singing": -. Private to "singling": l.

"singing" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCC  ·  "singling" · 8 letters · shape CVCCCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • singingisnging · singging · singign · singingg · singinng · singnig · sinigng · sinnging
  • singlingisngling · signling · singgling · singilng · singlign · singlingg · singlinng · singlling

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "singing" and "singling" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
In ordinary English text, does "singing" or "singling" show up more?
"singing" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,559 in our English list, against #41,884 for "singling". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

You've compared "singing" and "singling". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "singing" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "singling" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #230,527 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "singing" and "singling" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "singling vs sinning". 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 #230,527 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