toutingvstoyingConfusable pair

Which to use

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

#36,793
“touting” frequency rank
#29,497
“toying” frequency rank
66290
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature touting toying
Definition The act of one who touts. The act of one who toys.

Letter map: touting vs toying

Shared letters muted; letters that set touting and toying apart highlighted. Shared run: 5. touting runs 7 letters (CVVCVCC) against toying's 6 (CVVVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

7 ch
touting
6 ch
toying

Corpus notes: touting and toying

touting and toying 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 66290, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

touting is recorded at frequency rank #36,793, classified as anoun. toying is at rank #29,497, tagged as anoun.

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 66290, this pair ranks #68,692 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of touting vs toying

Shared letters: ginot. Private to "touting": u. Private to "toying": y.

"touting" · 7 letters · shape CVVCVCC  ·  "toying" · 6 letters · shape CVVVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • touting ← otuting · totuing · touitng · toutign · toutingg · toutinng · toutnig · toutting
  • toying ← otying · toiyng · toyign · toyingg · toyinng · toynig · toyying · ttoying

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "touting" and "toying" 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: "touting" vs "toying" - which ranks higher?
"toying" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #29,497 in our English list, against #36,793 for "touting". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pair "touting" vs "toying" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "touting" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "toying" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #68,692 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "touting" and "toying" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "toiling vs touting". 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 #68,692 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