wrathvsWrayConfusable pair

Quick tell: wrath is a noun, Wray is a name, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“wrath” is a noun and “Wray” is a name - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#11,328
“wrath” frequency rank
#32,658
“Wray” frequency rank
43986
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature wrath Wray
Definition Great anger; (countable) an instance of this. A village in Wray-with-Botton parish, City of Lancaster district, Lancashire, England (OS grid ref SD6067).

Letter map: wrath vs Wray

Shared letters muted; letters that set wrath and Wray apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. wrath runs 5 letters (CCVCC) against Wray's 4 (CCVV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
wrath
4 ch
Wray

Role in the sentence - wrath and Wray

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: wrath is anoun and Wrayaname. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 43986, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

wrath is recorded at frequency rank #11,328, classified as anoun, pronounced /ɹɒθ/. Wray is at rank #32,658, tagged as aname.

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 43986, this pair ranks #234,794 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of wrath vs Wray

Shared letters: arw. Private to "wrath": ht. Private to "Wray": y.

"wrath" · 5 letters · shape CCVCC  ·  "Wray" · 4 letters · shape CCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • wrath ← rwath · warth · wraht · wrathh · wratth · wrrath · wrtah · wwrath
  • Wray ← rway · wrayy · wrray · wrya · wwray

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "wrath" and "Wray" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "wrath" is a noun and "Wray" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "wrath" or "Wray" show up more?
"wrath" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #11,328 in our English list, against #32,658 for "Wray". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Pair "wrath" vs "Wray" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "wrath" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Wray" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #234,794 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "wrath" and "Wray" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "wordy vs Wray". 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 #234,794 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