Which to use
“ugly” is an adjective and “URL” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #3,535
- “ugly” frequency rank
- #8,874
- “URL” frequency rank
- 12409
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | ugly | URL |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Displeasing to the eye; aesthetically unpleasing. | Initialism of Uniform Resource Locator: the address of a web page, FTP site, audio stream or other Internet resource. |
Where the eye mixes ugly and URL
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: ugly is /ˈʌɡli/ while URL is /ˌjuːˌɑːɹˈɛl/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 12409, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
ugly is recorded at frequency rank #3,535, classified as anadj, pronounced /ˈʌɡli/. URL is at rank #8,874, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˌjuːˌɑːɹˈɛl/.
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 12409, this pair ranks #481,734 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of ugly vs URL
Shared letters: lu. Private to "ugly": gy. Private to "URL": r.
"ugly" · 4 letters · shape VCCV · "URL" · 3 letters · shape VCC
Known mistypes of this pair
- ugly ← guly · uggly · uglly · uglyy · ugyl · ulgy