Wilfully or willfully?
In American English write willfully; in British and Commonwealth English, wilfully. wilfully is an adverb meaning “Deliberately, on purpose”; willfully is an adverb meaning “US standard spelling of wilfully”. In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) willfully is about 2.5 times as common as wilfully.
What is the difference between wilfully and willfully?
| wilfully | willfully | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | adverb | adverb |
| Meaning | Deliberately, on purpose | USUS standard spelling of wilfully |
| Example | none recorded | none recorded |
| Pronunciation | /ˈwɪlfəli/ | not recorded |
| Region | no label | US |
| In writing | about once in every 2 million words | 1.2 times per million words |
Sources: wilfully and willfully 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 wilfully and willfully
wilfully
- 1
Deliberately, on purpose
willfully
- 1
USUS standard spelling of wilfully
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, wilfully or willfully?
wilfully appears about once in every 2 million words; willfully 1.2 times per million words.
wilfully about once in every 2 million wordswillfully 1.2 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 wilfully vs willfully?
“wilfully vs willfully” is searched about 20 times a month on Bing (Google reports it together with close variants, so it has no figure of its own) in the United States.
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.