tillvstiltTell them apart

Which to use

“till” and “tilt” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#36,617
“till” frequency rank
#34,331
“tilt” frequency rank
70948
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature till tilt
Definition Graine oléagineuse venant de l’Inde. Mécanisme destiné à interrompre une partie de flipper quand le joueur triche en soulevant l'appareil de façon à en modifier l'inclinaison.

Where the eye mixes till and tilt

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. till and tilt follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

4 ch
till
4 ch
tilt

Visual trap between till and tilt

A purely visual mix-up. till (\til\) and tilt (\tilt\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by a single letter - l in “till” becomes t in “tilt”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 70948, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

till is recorded at frequency rank #36,617, classified as anoun, pronounced \til\. tilt is at rank #34,331, tagged as anoun, pronounced \tilt\.

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 70948, this pair ranks #49,379 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of till vs tilt

Shared letters: ilt. Private to "till": -. Private to "tilt": -.

"till" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "tilt" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • till ← itll · tlil · ttill
  • tilt ← itlt · tillt · tiltt · titl · tlit · ttilt

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "till" for "tilt" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\til\ versus \tilt\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "till" vs "tilt" - which ranks higher?
"tilt" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #34,331 in our French list, against #36,617 for "till". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Eye-level mix-up between "till" and "tilt" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "till" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "tilt" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #49,379 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "till" and "tilt" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "tif vs till". 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 #49,379 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