lakevslarWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: lake is a noun, lar is an adverb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“lake” is a noun and “lar” is an adverb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#11,242
“lake” frequency rank
#48,637
“lar” frequency rank
59879
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature lake lar
Definition Lac. Trop.

Letter map: lake vs lar

Shared letters muted; letters that set lake and lar apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
lake
3 ch
lar

Part-of-speech tell for lake / lar

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: lake is anoun and laranadverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 59879, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

lake is recorded at frequency rank #11,242, classified as anoun, pronounced \ˈleɪk\. lar is at rank #48,637, tagged as anadv.

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 59879, this pair ranks #100,709 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of lake vs lar

Shared letters: al. Private to "lake": ek. Private to "lar": r.

"lake" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "lar" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • lakealke · laek · lakke · lkae · llake

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "lake" for "lar" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "lake" is a noun and "lar" an adverb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "lake" vs "lar" - which ranks higher?
"lake" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #11,242 in our French list, against #48,637 for "lar". 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 "lake" and "lar". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "lake" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "lar" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #100,709 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "lake" and "lar" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "lar vs lep". 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 #100,709 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