talkiesvstalliesWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

“talkies” and “tallies” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#49,664
“talkies” frequency rank
#38,644
“tallies” frequency rank
88308
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature talkies tallies
Definition plural of talkie plural of tally

Letter map: talkies vs tallies

Shared letters muted; letters that set talkies and tallies apart highlighted. Shared run: 6. talkies and tallies follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCCVVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

7 ch
talkies
7 ch
tallies

Corpus notes: talkies and tallies

talkies and tallies are indexed as a confusable English pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by a single letter - k in “talkies” becomes l in “tallies”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 88308, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

talkies is recorded at frequency rank #49,664, classified as anoun. tallies is at rank #38,644, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈtaliːs/.

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 88308, this pair ranks #6,514 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of talkies vs tallies

Shared letters: aeilst. Private to "talkies": k. Private to "tallies": -.

"talkies" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVVC  ·  "tallies" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • talkies ← atlkies · taklies · talikes · talkeis · talkiess · talkise · talkkies · tallkies
  • tallies ← atllies · talies · taliles · talleis · talliess · tallise · tlalies · ttallies

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "talkies" and "tallies" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They differ by a single letter - k in “talkies” becomes l in “tallies”, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
In ordinary English text, does "talkies" or "tallies" show up more?
"tallies" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #38,644 in our English list, against #49,664 for "talkies". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Pair "talkies" vs "tallies" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "talkies" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "tallies" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #6,514 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "talkies" and "tallies" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "talkie vs talkies". 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 #6,514 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