waitingvswallingTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#938
“waiting” frequency rank
#47,416
“walling” frequency rank
48354
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature waiting walling
Definition present participle and gerund of wait A group of walls.

Letter map: waiting vs walling

Shared letters muted; letters that set waiting and walling apart highlighted. Shared run: 5.

7 ch
waiting
7 ch
walling

Part-of-speech tell for waiting / walling

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: waiting is averb and wallinganoun. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 48354, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

waiting is recorded at frequency rank #938, classified as averb, pronounced /ˈweɪtɪŋ/. walling is at rank #47,416, 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 48354, this pair ranks #193,821 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of waiting vs walling

Shared letters: aginw. Private to "waiting": t. Private to "walling": l.

"waiting" · 7 letters · shape CVVCVCC  ·  "walling" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • waitingawiting · waiitng · waitign · waitingg · waitinng · waitnig · waitting · watiing
  • wallingawlling · walilng · waling · wallign · wallingg · wallinng · wallnig · wlaling

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "waiting" and "walling" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "waiting" is a verb and "walling" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "waiting" vs "walling" - which ranks higher?
"waiting" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #938 in our English list, against #47,416 for "walling". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pair "waiting" vs "walling" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "waiting" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "walling" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #193,821 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "waiting" and "walling" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "walling vs wallowing". 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 #193,821 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