warningvswordingConfusable pair

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

Which to use

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

#2,564
“warning” frequency rank
#14,053
“wording” frequency rank
16617
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature warning wording
Definition present participle of warn A choice of words and the style in which they are used in a given context.

Letter map: warning vs wording

Shared letters muted; letters that set warning and wording apart highlighted. Shared run: 5.

7 ch
warning
7 ch
wording

Part-of-speech tell for warning / wording

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: warning is averb and wordinganoun. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 16617, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

warning is recorded at frequency rank #2,564, classified as averb, pronounced /ˈwɔɹnɪŋ/. wording is at rank #14,053, 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 16617, this pair ranks #456,632 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of warning vs wording

Shared letters: ginrw. Private to "warning": a. Private to "wording": do.

"warning" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCC  ·  "wording" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • warningawrning · wanring · warinng · warnign · warningg · warninng · warnnig · warnning
  • wordingowrding · wodring · wordding · wordign · wordingg · wordinng · wordnig · woridng

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "warning" for "wording" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "warning" is a verb and "wording" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "warning" or "wording"?
"warning" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,564 in our English list, against #14,053 for "wording". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "warning" and "wording". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "warning" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "wording" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #456,632 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "warning" and "wording" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "whoring vs wording". 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 #456,632 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