takingvsthawingWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#406
“taking” frequency rank
#43,414
“thawing” frequency rank
43820
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature taking thawing
Definition Alluring; attractive. present participle and gerund of thaw

Letter map: taking vs thawing

Shared letters muted; letters that set taking and thawing apart highlighted. Shared run: 5.

6 ch
taking
7 ch
thawing

Role in the sentence - taking and thawing

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: taking is anadjective and thawingaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 43820, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

taking is recorded at frequency rank #406, classified as anadj, pronounced /ˈteɪkɪŋ/. thawing is at rank #43,414, 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 43820, this pair ranks #236,379 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of taking vs thawing

Shared letters: agint. Private to "taking": k. Private to "thawing": hw.

"taking" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCC  ·  "thawing" · 7 letters · shape CCVCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • takingatking · taikng · takign · takingg · takinng · takking · taknig · tkaing
  • thawinghtawing · tahwing · thaiwng · thawign · thawingg · thawinng · thawnig · thawwing

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "taking" and "thawing" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "taking" is an adjective and "thawing" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "taking" vs "thawing" - which ranks higher?
"taking" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #406 in our English list, against #43,414 for "thawing". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "taking" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "thawing" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #236,379 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "taking" and "thawing" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "thawing vs trawling". 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 #236,379 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