Sink or sync?
sink is a verb meaning “To descend or submerge (or to cause to do so) into a liquid or similar substance”; sync is a noun meaning “Harmony”. Use sink as a verb and sync as a noun (sync is also a verb: “To synchronize, especially in the senses of data…”). They sound the same (/ˈsɪŋk/). In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) sink is about 2.2 times as common as sync.
What is the difference between sink and sync?
| sink | sync | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | verb, noun | noun, verb |
| Meaning | To descend or submerge (or to cause to do so) into a liquid or similar substance To (directly or indirectly) cause a vessel to sink, generally by making it no longer watertight A basin used for holding water for washing | informalHarmony informalA music synchronization license, allowing the music to be synchronized with visual media such as films informalTo synchronize, especially in the senses of data synchronization, time synchronization, or synchronizing music with video |
| Example | A stone sinks in water. The sun gradually sank in the west | Our cloud storage automatically syncs your files to all your devices |
| Forms | sinks, sinking, sank, sunk | syncs |
| Pronunciation | /ˈsɪŋk/ /ˈsiŋk/ /zɪŋk/ | /sɪŋk/ |
| In writing | 16 times per million words | 7.2 times per million words |
Sources: sink and sync in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of sink and sync
sink
- 1
To descend or submerge (or to cause to do so) into a liquid or similar substance
A stone sinks in water. The sun gradually sank in the west
- 2
A basin used for holding water for washing
Roy: The work was fiiine. There was nothing wrong with the work. But they caught him... He pissed in the sink. Jen: Oh. Oh! Roy: Yeah... Jen: Which sink? Roy: All the sinks. Yeah…
- 3
To (directly or indirectly) cause a vessel to sink, generally by making it no longer watertight
An iceberg sank the Titanic. British battleships sank the Bismarck
- 4
A drain for carrying off wastewater
- 5
To push (something) into something
The joint will hold tighter if you sink a wood screw through both boards. The dog sank its teeth into the delivery man's leg
- 6
A sinkhole
- 7
To make by digging or delving
to sink a well in the ground
- 8
A depression in land where water collects, with no visible outlet
sync
- 1
informalClipping of synchronization or synchrony
- 2
informalTo synchronize, especially in the senses of data synchronization, time synchronization, or synchronizing music with video
Our cloud storage automatically syncs your files to all your devices
- 3
informalHarmony
- 4
informalTo flush all pending I/O operations to disk
- 5
informalA music synchronization license, allowing the music to be synchronized with visual media such as films
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, sink or sync?
sink appears 16 times per million words; sync 7.2 times per million words.
sink 16 times per million wordssync 7.2 times per million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search sink vs sync?
“sink vs sync” is searched about 30 times a month on Google and 10 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“sync vs sink”, “sink or sync”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.