Which to use
“woken” is a verb and “woven” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #17,995
- “woken” frequency rank
- #13,844
- “woven” frequency rank
- 31839
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | woken | woven |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | past participle of wake | Fabricated by weaving. |
Where the eye mixes woken and woven
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. woken and woven follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Look-alike desk: woken vs woven
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: woken is /ˈwəʊ.kən/ while woven is /ˈwəʊ.vən/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by a single letter - k in “woken” becomes v in “woven”, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 31839, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
woken is recorded at frequency rank #17,995, classified as averb, pronounced /ˈwəʊ.kən/. woven is at rank #13,844, tagged as anadj, pronounced /ˈwəʊ.vən/.
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 31839, this pair ranks #342,790 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of woken vs woven
Shared letters: enow. Private to "woken": k. Private to "woven": v.
"woken" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC · "woven" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "woken" and "woven" mean the same thing in a sentence?
In ordinary English text, does "woken" or "woven" show up more?
What to do next
Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.
- Full dictionary entry for "woken" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "woven" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #342,790 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "woken" and "woven" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "woken vs wove". 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 #342,790 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.