thawingvsthrowingWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#43,414
“thawing” frequency rank
#3,662
“throwing” frequency rank
47076
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature thawing throwing
Definition present participle and gerund of thaw present participle and gerund of throw

Letter map: thawing vs throwing

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

7 ch
thawing
8 ch
throwing

Corpus notes: thawing and throwing

thawing and throwing 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 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 47076, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

thawing is recorded at frequency rank #43,414, classified as averb. throwing is at rank #3,662, tagged as averb, pronounced /ˈθɹoʊ.ɪŋ/.

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 47076, this pair ranks #205,780 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of thawing vs throwing

Shared letters: ghintw. Private to "thawing": a. Private to "throwing": or.

"thawing" · 7 letters · shape CCVCVCC  ·  "throwing" · 8 letters · shape CCCVCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • thawinghtawing · tahwing · thaiwng · thawign · thawingg · thawinng · thawnig · thawwing
  • throwinghtrowing · thhrowing · thorwing · throiwng · throwign · throwingg · throwinng · thrownig

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "thawing" and "throwing" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
Frequency check: "thawing" vs "throwing" - which ranks higher?
"throwing" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,662 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.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "thawing" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "throwing" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #205,780 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "thawing" and "throwing" 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 #205,780 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