wearvsweekWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#1,289
“wear” frequency rank
#251
“week” frequency rank
1540
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature wear week
Definition To have on: Any period of seven consecutive days.

Where the eye mixes wear and week

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

4 ch
wear
4 ch
week

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: wear is /wɛə/ while week is /wiːk/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 1540, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

wear is recorded at frequency rank #1,289, classified as averb, pronounced /wɛə/. week is at rank #251, tagged as anoun, pronounced /wiːk/.

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 1540, this pair ranks #527,217 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of wear vs week

Shared letters: ew. Private to "wear": ar. Private to "week": k.

"wear" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "week" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • wearewar · waer · wearr · wera · wwear
  • weekewek · weekk · wek · weke · wweek

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "wear" and "week" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "wear" is a verb and "week" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "wear" or "week"?
"week" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #251 in our English list, against #1,289 for "wear". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list