sonvssookWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#534
“son” frequency rank
#46,187
“sook” frequency rank
46721
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature son sook
Definition One's male offspring. Alternative spelling of suck.

Letter map: son vs sook

Shared letters muted; letters that set son and sook apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

3 ch
son
4 ch
sook

Part-of-speech tell for son / sook

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: son is anoun and sookaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 46721, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

son is recorded at frequency rank #534, classified as anoun, pronounced /sʌn/. sook is at rank #46,187, tagged as averb.

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 46721, this pair ranks #209,096 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of son vs sook

Shared letters: os. Private to "son": n. Private to "sook": k.

"son" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "sook" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • sookosok · sok · soko · sookk · ssook

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "son" and "sook" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "son" is a noun and "sook" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "son" vs "sook" - which ranks higher?
"son" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #534 in our English list, against #46,187 for "sook". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

You've compared "son" and "sook". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "son" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "sook" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #209,096 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "son" and "sook" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "soca vs sook". 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 #209,096 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