wingvswonWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#25,857
“wing” frequency rank
#28,023
“won” frequency rank
53880
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature wing won
Definition Aile (d’un avion, d’un oiseau, d’un insecte…). Unité monétaire de Corée du Sud, divisée en 100 jeons. Son symbole est ₩ (Unicode U+20A9). Son code ISO 4217 est KRW.

Where the eye mixes wing and won

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

4 ch
wing
3 ch
won

Why the eye confuses wing with won

A purely visual mix-up. wing (\wɪŋ\) and won (\wɔn\) 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 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 53880, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

wing is recorded at frequency rank #25,857, classified as anoun, pronounced \wɪŋ\. won is at rank #28,023, tagged as anoun, pronounced \wɔn\.

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 53880, this pair ranks #137,810 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of wing vs won

Shared letters: nw. Private to "wing": gi. Private to "won": o.

"wing" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "won" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • wingiwng · wign · wingg · winng · wnig · wwing

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "wing" for "won" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\wɪŋ\ versus \wɔn\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary French text, does "wing" or "won" show up more?
"wing" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #25,857 in our French list, against #28,023 for "won". 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 "wing" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "won" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #137,810 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "wing" and "won" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "won vs wren". 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 #137,810 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