doingvsdrinkWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#39,751
“doing” frequency rank
#37,765
“drink” frequency rank
77516
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature doing drink
Definition Participe présent du verbe irrégulier do. Cérémonie où l’on sert des boissons et souvent accompagné de zakouski.

Where the eye mixes doing and drink

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

5 ch
doing
5 ch
drink

Visual trap between doing and drink

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: doing is \ˈdu.ɪŋ\ while drink is \dʁiŋk\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 77516, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

doing is recorded at frequency rank #39,751, classified as averb, pronounced \ˈdu.ɪŋ\. drink is at rank #37,765, tagged as anoun, pronounced \dʁiŋk\.

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 77516, this pair ranks #28,132 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of doing vs drink

Shared letters: din. Private to "doing": go. Private to "drink": kr.

"doing" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC  ·  "drink" · 5 letters · shape CCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • doingddoing · diong · doign · doingg · doinng · donig · oding
  • drinkddrink · dirnk · drikn · drinkk · drinnk · drnik · drrink · rdink

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "doing" and "drink" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "doing" is a verb and "drink" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "doing" or "drink" show up more?
"drink" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #37,765 in our French list, against #39,751 for "doing". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "doing" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "drink" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #28,132 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "doing" and "drink" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "djinn vs doing". 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 #28,132 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list