guidevsguíeWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: guide is a noun, guíe is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“guide” is a noun and “guíe” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#26,070
“guide” frequency rank
#32,238
“guíe” frequency rank
58308
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature guide guíe
Definition Guía. Primera persona del singular (yo) del presente de subjuntivo de guiar o de guiarse.

Where the eye mixes guide and guíe

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

5 ch
guide
4 ch
guíe

Visual trap between guide and guíe

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: guide is /gaɪd/ while guíe is [ˈgie]. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 58308, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

guide is recorded at frequency rank #26,070, classified as anoun, pronounced /gaɪd/. guíe is at rank #32,238, tagged as averb, pronounced [ˈgie].

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 58308, this pair ranks #66,946 of 323,831 scored Spanish confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of guide vs guíe

Shared letters: egu. Private to "guide": di. Private to "guíe": í.

"guide" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV  ·  "guíe" · 4 letters · shape CVVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • guidegguide · giude · gudie · guidde · guied · ugide

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "guide" for "guíe" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "guide" is a noun and "guíe" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "guide" or "guíe"?
"guide" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #26,070 in our Spanish list, against #32,238 for "guíe". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "guide" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "guíe" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #66,946 of 323,831 scored Spanish confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "guide" and "guíe" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "guan vs guíe". 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 #66,946 of 323,831 scored Spanish pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list