Which to use
“ear” and “early” are a confusable Portuguese pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #39,574
- “ear” frequency rank
- #15,563
- “early” frequency rank
- 55137
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | ear | early |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | coclear | cedo |
Letter map: ear vs early
Shared letters muted; letters that set ear and early apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.
Pair insight - ear / early
ear and early are indexed as a confusable Portuguese pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “ear” sits inside “early”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 55137, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
ear is recorded at frequency rank #39,574, classified as anadj. early is at rank #15,563, tagged as anadj, pronounced /ˈɜːɹ.li/.
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 55137, this pair ranks #10,780 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of ear vs early
Shared letters: aer. Private to "ear": -. Private to "early": ly.
"ear" · 3 letters · shape VVC · "early" · 5 letters · shape VVCCV
Known mistypes of this pair
- early ← aerly · ealry · earlly · earlyy · earrly · earyl · eraly
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "ear" and "early" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Which is more common, "ear" or "early"?
What to do next
You've compared "ear" and "early". Here's where to go from here.
- Full dictionary entry for "ear" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "early" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #10,780 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "ear" and "early" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ear vs être". 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 #10,780 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.