tastefulvstastefullyWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: tasteful is a adjective, tastefully is an adverb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“tasteful” is an adjective and “tastefully” is an adverb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#29,118
“tasteful” frequency rank
#49,666
“tastefully” frequency rank
78784
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature tasteful tastefully
Definition Having or exhibiting good taste; aesthetically pleasing or conforming to expectations or ideals of what is appropriate. In a tasteful manner.

Letter map: tasteful vs tastefully

Shared letters muted; letters that set tasteful and tastefully apart highlighted. Shared run: 8. tasteful runs 8 letters (CVCCVCVC) against tastefully's 10 (CVCCVCVCCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

8 ch
tasteful
10 ch
tastefully

Grammar separator: tasteful vs tastefully

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: tasteful is anadjective and tastefullyanadverb. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “tasteful” sits inside “tastefully”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 78784, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

tasteful is recorded at frequency rank #29,118, classified as anadj, pronounced /ˈteɪstfəl/. tastefully is at rank #49,666, tagged as anadv.

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 78784, this pair ranks #23,786 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of tasteful vs tastefully

Shared letters: aeflstu. Private to "tasteful": -. Private to "tastefully": y.

"tasteful" · 8 letters · shape CVCCVCVC  ·  "tastefully" · 10 letters · shape CVCCVCVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • tasteful ← atsteful · tasetful · tassteful · tastefful · tasteflu · tastefull · tasteufl · tastfeul
  • tastefully ← atstefully · tasetfully · tasstefully · tasteffully · tastefluly · tastefullyy · tastefuly · tastefulyl

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "tasteful" for "tastefully" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "tasteful" is an adjective and "tastefully" an adverb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "tasteful" or "tastefully"?
"tasteful" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #29,118 in our English list, against #49,666 for "tastefully". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "tasteful" and "tastefully".

  • Full dictionary entry for "tasteful" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "tastefully" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #23,786 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "tasteful" and "tastefully" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "tactful vs tasteful". 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 #23,786 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