Which to use
“struggle” is a noun and “struggled” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #2,408
- “struggle” frequency rank
- #7,066
- “struggled” frequency rank
- 9474
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | struggle | struggled |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | A contortion of the body in an attempt to escape or to perform a difficult task. | simple past and past participle of struggle |
Where the spellings diverge
Shared letters are muted; the letters that actually set struggle and struggled apart are highlighted. They share 8 letters in sequence, which is exactly why the eye skips the difference.
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: struggle is /ˈstɹʌɡəl/ while struggled is /ˈstɹʌɡl̩d/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “struggle” sits inside “struggled”, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 9474, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
struggle is recorded at frequency rank #2,408, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈstɹʌɡəl/. struggled is at rank #7,066, tagged as averb, pronounced /ˈstɹʌɡl̩d/.
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 9474, this pair ranks #497,220 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of struggle vs struggled
Shared letters: eglrstu. Private to "struggle": -. Private to "struggled": d.
"struggle" · 8 letters · shape CCCVCCCV · "struggled" · 9 letters · shape CCCVCCCVC