takingvsthankingWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: taking is a adjective, thanking is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“taking” is an adjective and “thanking” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#406
“taking” frequency rank
#14,649
“thanking” frequency rank
15055
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature taking thanking
Definition Alluring; attractive. The act by which thanks are given; thanks.

Letter map: taking vs thanking

Shared letters muted; letters that set taking and thanking apart highlighted. Shared run: 6.

6 ch
taking
8 ch
thanking

Part-of-speech tell for taking / thanking

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: taking is anadjective and thankinganoun. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 15055, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

taking is recorded at frequency rank #406, classified as anadj, pronounced /ˈteɪkɪŋ/. thanking is at rank #14,649, 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 15055, this pair ranks #466,328 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of taking vs thanking

Shared letters: agiknt. Private to "taking": -. Private to "thanking": h.

"taking" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCC  ·  "thanking" · 8 letters · shape CCVCCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • takingatking · taikng · takign · takingg · takinng · takking · taknig · tkaing
  • thankinghtanking · tahnking · thakning · thanikng · thankign · thankingg · thankinng · thankking

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "taking" and "thanking" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "taking" is an adjective and "thanking" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "taking" or "thanking" show up more?
"taking" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #406 in our English list, against #14,649 for "thanking". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

You've compared "taking" and "thanking". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "taking" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "thanking" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #466,328 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "taking" and "thanking" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "thanking vs thawing". 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 #466,328 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