lockvslothTell them apart

Quick tell: lock is a verb, loth is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“lock” is a verb and “loth” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#20,485
“lock” frequency rank
#45,714
“loth” frequency rank
66199
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature lock loth
Definition Deuxième personne du singulier de l’impératif présent de locken. Variante orthographique de loath.

Letter map: lock vs loth

Shared letters muted; letters that set lock and loth apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
lock
4 ch
loth

Role in the sentence - lock and loth

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: lock is averb and lothanadjective. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 66199, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

lock is recorded at frequency rank #20,485, classified as averb, pronounced \lɔk\. loth is at rank #45,714, tagged as anadj.

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 66199, this pair ranks #68,857 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of lock vs loth

Shared letters: lo. Private to "lock": ck. Private to "loth": ht.

"lock" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "loth" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • locklcok · llock · locck · lockk · lokc · olck
  • lothlloth · loht · lothh · lotth · ltoh · olth

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "lock" and "loth" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "lock" is a verb and "loth" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "lock" or "loth" show up more?
"lock" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #20,485 in our French list, against #45,714 for "loth". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pair "lock" vs "loth" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "lock" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "loth" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #68,857 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "lock" and "loth" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "lobo vs loth". 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 #68,857 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