Which to use
“friend” is a noun and “friendly” is an adverb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #22,369
- “friend” frequency rank
- #35,051
- “friendly” frequency rank
- 57420
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | friend | friendly |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Amigo. | Amigablemente. |
Where the eye mixes friend and friendly
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 6 letters in sequence.
Visual trap between friend and friendly
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: friend is /fɹɛnd/ while friendly is /ˈfɹɛnd.li/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “friend” sits inside “friendly”, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adverb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 57420, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
friend is recorded at frequency rank #22,369, classified as anoun, pronounced /fɹɛnd/. friendly is at rank #35,051, tagged as anadv, pronounced /ˈfɹɛnd.li/.
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 57420, this pair ranks #70,575 of 323,831 scored Spanish confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of friend vs friendly
Shared letters: definr. Private to "friend": -. Private to "friendly": ly.
"friend" · 6 letters · shape CCVVCC · "friendly" · 8 letters · shape CCVVCCCV
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "friend" for "friendly" ever safe?
In ordinary Spanish text, does "friend" or "friendly" show up more?
What to do next
Eye-level mix-up between "friend" and "friendly" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "friend" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "friendly" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #70,575 of 323,831 scored Spanish confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "friend" and "friendly" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "friendly vs friends". 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 #70,575 of 323,831 scored Spanish pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.