workdayvsworldlyTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#31,414
“workday” frequency rank
#18,738
“worldly” frequency rank
50152
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature workday worldly
Definition Any of the days of a week on which work is done; any day in a workweek. The five workdays in many countries are usually Monday to Friday (and are defined as such in official and legal usage even though many people work on weekends). Concerned with human or earthly matters, physical as opposed to spiritual.

Letter map: workday vs worldly

Shared letters muted; letters that set workday and worldly apart highlighted. Shared run: 5.

7 ch
workday
7 ch
worldly

Part-of-speech tell for workday / worldly

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: workday is anoun and worldlyanadjective. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 50152, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

workday is recorded at frequency rank #31,414, classified as anoun. worldly is at rank #18,738, tagged as anadj, pronounced /ˈwɜː(ɹ)ldli/.

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 50152, this pair ranks #176,868 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of workday vs worldly

Shared letters: dorwy. Private to "workday": ak. Private to "worldly": l.

"workday" · 7 letters · shape CVCCCVV  ·  "worldly" · 7 letters · shape CVCCCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • workdayowrkday · wokrday · wordkay · workady · workdayy · workdday · workdya · workkday
  • worldlyowrldly · wolrdly · wordlly · worlddly · worldlly · worldlyy · worldyl · worlldly

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "workday" and "worldly" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "workday" is a noun and "worldly" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "workday" or "worldly"?
"worldly" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #18,738 in our English list, against #31,414 for "workday". 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 "workday" and "worldly". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "workday" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "worldly" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #176,868 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "workday" and "worldly" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "wordy vs workday". 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 #176,868 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