Which to use
“tongue” is a noun and “tongued” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #3,853
- “tongue” frequency rank
- #45,127
- “tongued” frequency rank
- 48980
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | tongue | tongued |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | The flexible muscular organ in the mouth that is used to move food around, for tasting and that is moved into various positions to modify the flow of air from the lungs in order to produce different sounds in speech. | Resembling a tongue. |
Where the eye mixes tongue and tongued
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 6 letters in sequence. tongue runs 6 letters (CVCCVV) against tongued's 7 (CVCCVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Look-alike desk: tongue vs tongued
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: tongue is /tʌŋ/ while tongued is /tʌŋd/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “tongue” sits inside “tongued”, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 48980, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
tongue is recorded at frequency rank #3,853, classified as anoun, pronounced /tʌŋ/. tongued is at rank #45,127, tagged as anadj, pronounced /tʌŋd/.
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 48980, this pair ranks #187,993 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of tongue vs tongued
Shared letters: egnotu. Private to "tongue": -. Private to "tongued": d.
"tongue" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVV · "tongued" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "tongue" and "tongued" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Which is more common, "tongue" or "tongued"?
What to do next
Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.
- Full dictionary entry for "tongue" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "tongued" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #187,993 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "tongue" and "tongued" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "tinged vs tongued". 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 #187,993 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.