wagersvswaverWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: wagers is a noun, waver is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“wagers” is a noun and “waver” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#40,963
“wagers” frequency rank
#39,643
“waver” frequency rank
80606
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature wagers waver
Definition plural of wager To swing or wave, especially in the air, wind, etc.; to flutter.

Letter map: wagers vs waver

Shared letters muted; letters that set wagers and waver apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. wagers runs 6 letters (CVCVCC) against waver's 5 (CVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
wagers
5 ch
waver

Part-of-speech tell for wagers / waver

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: wagers is anoun and waveraverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 80606, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

wagers is recorded at frequency rank #40,963, classified as anoun. waver is at rank #39,643, tagged as averb, pronounced /ˈweɪvə/.

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 80606, this pair ranks #19,445 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of wagers vs waver

Shared letters: aerw. Private to "wagers": gs. Private to "waver": v.

"wagers" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCC  ·  "waver" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • wagers ← awgers · waegrs · wagerrs · wagerss · wagesr · waggers · wagres · wgaers
  • waver ← awver · waevr · waverr · wavre · wavver · wvaer · wwaver

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "wagers" for "waver" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "wagers" is a noun and "waver" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "wagers" or "waver"?
"waver" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #39,643 in our English list, against #40,963 for "wagers". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pair "wagers" vs "waver" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "wagers" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "waver" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #19,445 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "wagers" and "waver" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "waver vs wove". 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 #19,445 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