Which to use
“wood” is a noun and “woody” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #17,040
- “wood” frequency rank
- #15,285
- “woody” frequency rank
- 32325
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | wood | woody |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Bois, substance dure et fibreuse des arbres. | Boisé, vieilli dans un fût en bois. |
Letter map: wood vs woody
Shared letters muted; letters that set wood and woody apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. wood runs 4 letters (CVVC) against woody's 5 (CVVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Role in the sentence - wood and woody
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: wood is anoun and woodyanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “wood” sits inside “woody”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 32325, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
wood is recorded at frequency rank #17,040, classified as anoun, pronounced \wʊd\. woody is at rank #15,285, 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 32325, this pair ranks #298,007 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of wood vs woody
Shared letters: dow. Private to "wood": -. Private to "woody": y.
"wood" · 4 letters · shape CVVC · "woody" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "wood" for "woody" ever safe?
In ordinary French text, does "wood" or "woody" show up more?
After this comparison
Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "wood" and "woody".
- Full dictionary entry for "wood" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "woody" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #298,007 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "wood" and "woody" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "wola vs wood". 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 #298,007 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.