Which to use
“skillful” is an adjective and “skillfully” is an adverb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #24,592
- “skillful” frequency rank
- #35,517
- “skillfully” frequency rank
- 60109
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | skillful | skillfully |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Possessing skill; skilled. | In a skillful manner; with skill. |
Letter map: skillful vs skillfully
Shared letters muted; letters that set skillful and skillfully apart highlighted. Shared run: 8.
Part-of-speech tell for skillful / skillfully
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: skillful is anadjective and skillfullyanadverb. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “skillful” sits inside “skillfully”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 60109, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
skillful is recorded at frequency rank #24,592, classified as anadj, pronounced /ˈskɪl.fəl/. skillfully is at rank #35,517, tagged as anadv.
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 60109, this pair ranks #102,134 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of skillful vs skillfully
Shared letters: fiklsu. Private to "skillful": -. Private to "skillfully": y.
"skillful" · 8 letters · shape CCVCCCVC · "skillfully" · 10 letters · shape CCVCCCVCCV
Known mistypes of this pair
- skillful ← ksillful · sikllful · skilflul · skillfful · skillflu · skillfull · skillufl · skkillful
- skillfully ← ksillfully · sikllfully · skilflully · skilfully · skillffully · skillfluly · skillfullyy · skillfuly
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "skillful" for "skillfully" ever safe?
Which is more common, "skillful" or "skillfully"?
After this comparison
Pair "skillful" vs "skillfully" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.
- Full dictionary entry for "skillful" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "skillfully" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #102,134 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "skillful" and "skillfully" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "skilful vs skillful". 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 #102,134 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.