thankingvsthawingWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#14,649
“thanking” frequency rank
#43,414
“thawing” frequency rank
58063
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature thanking thawing
Definition The act by which thanks are given; thanks. present participle and gerund of thaw

Letter map: thanking vs thawing

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

8 ch
thanking
7 ch
thawing

Part-of-speech tell for thanking / thawing

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: thanking is anoun and thawingaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 58063, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

thanking is recorded at frequency rank #14,649, classified as anoun. 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 58063, this pair ranks #115,079 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of thanking vs thawing

Shared letters: aghint. Private to "thanking": k. Private to "thawing": w.

"thanking" · 8 letters · shape CCVCCVCC  ·  "thawing" · 7 letters · shape CCVCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • thankinghtanking · tahnking · thakning · thanikng · thankign · thankingg · thankinng · thankking
  • thawinghtawing · tahwing · thaiwng · thawign · thawingg · thawinng · thawnig · thawwing

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "thanking" and "thawing" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "thanking" is a noun and "thawing" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "thanking" vs "thawing" - which ranks higher?
"thanking" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #14,649 in our English list, against #43,414 for "thawing". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pair "thanking" vs "thawing" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "thanking" 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 #115,079 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "thanking" 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 #115,079 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