WilleyvswiltedTell them apart

Quick tell: Willey is a name, wilted is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“Willey” is a name and “wilted” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#49,725
“Willey” frequency rank
#47,423
“wilted” frequency rank
97148
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Willey wilted
Definition A civil parish in Herefordshire, England. Drooping, typically due to lack of water.

Letter map: Willey vs wilted

Shared letters muted; letters that set Willey and wilted apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. Willey (CVCCVV) and wilted (CVCCVC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

6 ch
Willey
6 ch
wilted

Role in the sentence - Willey and wilted

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: Willey is aname and wiltedanadjective. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 97148, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Willey is recorded at frequency rank #49,725, classified as aname. wilted is at rank #47,423, tagged as anadj.

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 97148, this pair ranks #391 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of Willey vs wilted

Shared letters: eilw. Private to "Willey": y. Private to "wilted": dt.

"Willey" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVV  ·  "wilted" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Willeyiwlley · wilely · willeyy · willye · wliley · wwilley
  • wiltediwlted · wiletd · willted · wiltde · wiltedd · wiltted · witled · wlited

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "Willey" for "wilted" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Willey" is a name and "wilted" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "Willey" or "wilted" show up more?
"wilted" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #47,423 in our English list, against #49,725 for "Willey". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

You've compared "Willey" and "wilted". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "Willey" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "wilted" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #391 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Willey" and "wilted" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "walleye vs Willey". 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 #391 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