Which to use
“win” is a verb and “wince” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #408
- “win” frequency rank
- #46,866
- “wince” frequency rank
- 47274
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | win | wince |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | To conquer, defeat. | A sudden movement or gesture of shrinking away. |
Where the eye mixes win and wince
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: win is /wɪn/ while wince is /wɪns/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “win” sits inside “wince”, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 47274, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
win is recorded at frequency rank #408, classified as averb, pronounced /wɪn/. wince is at rank #46,866, tagged as anoun, pronounced /wɪns/.
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 47274, this pair ranks #203,956 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of win vs wince
Shared letters: inw. Private to "win": -. Private to "wince": ce.
"win" · 3 letters · shape CVC · "wince" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV
Known mistypes of this pair
- wince ← iwnce · wicne · wincce · winec · winnce · wnice · wwince