woldvswookTell them apart

Which to use

“wold” and “wook” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#42,997
“wold” frequency rank
#38,248
“wook” frequency rank
81245
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature wold wook
Definition An unforested or deforested plain, a grassland, a moor. An unwashed, unemployed moocher who enjoys traveling to festivals and crashes at other people's houses.

Letter map: wold vs wook

Shared letters muted; letters that set wold and wook apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. wold (CVCC) and wook (CVVC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

4 ch
wold
4 ch
wook

Corpus notes: wold and wook

wold and wook are indexed as a confusable English pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 81245, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

wold is recorded at frequency rank #42,997, classified as anoun, pronounced /wəʊld/. wook is at rank #38,248, tagged as anoun.

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 81245, this pair ranks #18,072 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of wold vs wook

Shared letters: ow. Private to "wold": dl. Private to "wook": k.

"wold" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "wook" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • wold ← owld · wlod · wodl · woldd · wolld · wwold
  • wook ← owok · woko · wookk · wwook

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "wold" and "wook" be used interchangeably?
No. They share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
Frequency check: "wold" vs "wook" - which ranks higher?
"wook" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #38,248 in our English list, against #42,997 for "wold". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pair "wold" vs "wook" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "wold" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "wook" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #18,072 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "wold" and "wook" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "wold 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 #18,072 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