thrushvstrustTell them apart

Which to use

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

#35,985
“thrush” frequency rank
#780
“trust” frequency rank
36765
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature thrush trust
Definition Any of numerous species of songbirds of the cosmopolitan family Turdidae, such as the song thrush, mistle thrush, bluebird, and American robin. Confidence in or reliance on some person or quality.

Where the eye mixes thrush and trust

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.

6 ch
thrush
5 ch
trust

Why the eye confuses thrush with trust

A purely visual mix-up. thrush (/θɹʌʃ/) and trust (/tɹʌst/) 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 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 36765, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

thrush is recorded at frequency rank #35,985, classified as anoun, pronounced /θɹʌʃ/. trust is at rank #780, tagged as anoun, pronounced /tɹʌst/.

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 36765, this pair ranks #300,344 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of thrush vs trust

Shared letters: rstu. Private to "thrush": h. Private to "trust": -.

"thrush" · 6 letters · shape CCCVCC  ·  "trust" · 5 letters · shape CCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • thrushhtrush · thhrush · thrrush · thrsuh · thruhs · thrushh · thrussh · thursh
  • trustrtust · trrust · trsut · trusst · trustt · truts · ttrust · turst

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "thrush" for "trust" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (/θɹʌʃ/ versus /tɹʌst/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary English text, does "thrush" or "trust" show up more?
"trust" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #780 in our English list, against #35,985 for "thrush". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "thrush" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "trust" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #300,344 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "thrush" and "trust" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "thrush vs torus". 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 #300,344 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