Which to use
“telly” and “tilly” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #22,523
- “telly” frequency rank
- #31,380
- “tilly” frequency rank
- 53903
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | telly | tilly |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Television. | An extra product given to a customer at no additional charge; a lagniappe. |
Where the eye mixes telly and tilly
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. telly and tilly follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Visual trap between telly and tilly
A purely visual mix-up. telly (/ˈtɛli/) and tilly (/ˈtɪli/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by a single letter - e in “telly” becomes i in “tilly”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 53903, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
telly is recorded at frequency rank #22,523, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈtɛli/. tilly is at rank #31,380, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈtɪli/.
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 53903, this pair ranks #145,239 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of telly vs tilly
Shared letters: lty. Private to "telly": e. Private to "tilly": i.
"telly" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV · "tilly" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "telly" for "tilly" ever safe?
Frequency check: "telly" vs "tilly" - which ranks higher?
Useful next steps
Eye-level mix-up between "telly" and "tilly" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "telly" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "tilly" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #145,239 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "telly" and "tilly" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "tilly vs tulle". 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 #145,239 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.