Weak or week?
weak is an adjective meaning “Lacking in force (usually strength) or ability”; week is a noun meaning “Any period of seven consecutive days”. Use weak as an adjective and week as a noun. In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) week is about 7.9 times as common as weak.
What is the difference between weak and week?
| weak | week | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | adjective | noun, interjection |
| Meaning | Lacking in force (usually strength) or ability Unable to sustain a great weight, pressure, or strain | Any period of seven consecutive days A period of seven days beginning with Sunday or Monday The squeal of a pig |
| Example | The child was too weak to move the boulder | Holonyms: megasecond < fortnight < month < year < gigasecond < century < kiloannum, kiloyear, millennium < terasecond < mega-annum… |
| Forms | weaker, weakest | weeks |
| Pronunciation | /wi(ː)k/ [wɪik] | /wiːk/ [ˈwɪi̯k] |
| In writing | 46 times per million words | 363 times per million words |
Sources: weak and week in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of weak and week
weak
- 1
Lacking in force (usually strength) or ability
The child was too weak to move the boulder
- 2
Unable to sustain a great weight, pressure, or strain
a weak timber; a weak rope
- 3
Limp, soft
- 4
Unable to withstand temptation, urgency, persuasion, etc.; easily impressed, moved, or overcome; accessible; vulnerable
weak resolutions; weak virtue
- 5
Having a strong, irrepressible emotional love for someone or (less often) something; sentimentally affected by such love
- 6
Dilute, lacking in taste or potency
We were served stale bread and weak tea
- 7
Regular in inflection, lacking vowel changes and having a past tense marked by /-d-/, /-t-/, or /-ð-/
The verb to walk is weak because it has a past tense of walked and all forms are inflected by adding the typical suffix (ie is regular) to the stem walk- (ie has no vowel changes)
- 8
Showing less distinct grammatical endings
week
- 1
Any period of seven consecutive days
Holonyms: megasecond < fortnight < month < year < gigasecond < century < kiloannum, kiloyear, millennium < terasecond < mega-annum, megayear < petasecond < giga-annum, gigayear <…
- 2
The squeal of a pig
- 3
A period of seven days beginning with Sunday or Monday
- 4
A period of five days beginning with Monday
- 5
A subdivision of the month into longer periods of work days punctuated by shorter weekend periods of days for markets, rest, or religious observation such as a sabbath
A 4-day week consists of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday
- 6
A date seven days after (sometimes before) the specified day
I'll see you Thursday week. [a week on Thursday, i.e. Thursday after next]
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, weak or week?
weak appears 46 times per million words; week 363 times per million words.
weak 46 times per million wordsweek 363 times per million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search weak vs week?
“weak vs week” is searched about 1,000 times a month on Google and 20 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“week vs weak”, “weak or week”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.