wineryvswintryWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: winery is a noun, wintry is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“winery” is a noun and “wintry” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#19,741
“winery” frequency rank
#40,521
“wintry” frequency rank
60262
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature winery wintry
Definition A place where wine is made, or a company that makes wine. Suggestive or characteristic of winter; cold, stormy.

Where the eye mixes winery and wintry

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. winery (CVCVCV) and wintry (CVCCCV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

6 ch
winery
6 ch
wintry

Why the eye confuses winery with wintry

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: winery is /ˈwaɪnəɹi/ while wintry is /ˈwɪnt(ə)ɹɪ/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by a single letter - e in “winery” becomes t in “wintry”, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 60262, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

winery is recorded at frequency rank #19,741, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈwaɪnəɹi/. wintry is at rank #40,521, tagged as anadj, pronounced /ˈwɪnt(ə)ɹɪ/.

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 60262, this pair ranks #101,221 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of winery vs wintry

Shared letters: inrwy. Private to "winery": e. Private to "wintry": t.

"winery" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV  ·  "wintry" · 6 letters · shape CVCCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • wineryiwnery · wienry · winerry · wineryy · wineyr · winnery · winrey · wniery
  • wintryiwntry · winntry · winrty · wintrry · wintryy · winttry · wintyr · witnry

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "winery" and "wintry" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "winery" is a noun and "wintry" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "winery" or "wintry"?
"winery" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #19,741 in our English list, against #40,521 for "wintry". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "winery" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "wintry" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #101,221 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "winery" and "wintry" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Winton vs wintry". 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 #101,221 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