earlyvseasyWhat's the difference?

Which to use

“early” and “easy” are a confusable Portuguese pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#15,563
“early” frequency rank
#13,720
“easy” frequency rank
29283
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature early easy
Definition cedo fácil

Where the eye mixes early and easy

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

5 ch
early
4 ch
easy

Visual trap between early and easy

A purely visual mix-up. early (/ˈɜːɹ.li/) and easy (/ˈiːzi/) 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 29283, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

early is recorded at frequency rank #15,563, classified as anadj, pronounced /ˈɜːɹ.li/. easy is at rank #13,720, tagged as anadj, pronounced /ˈiːzi/.

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 29283, this pair ranks #39,403 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of early vs easy

Shared letters: aey. Private to "early": lr. Private to "easy": s.

"early" · 5 letters · shape VVCCV  ·  "easy" · 4 letters · shape VVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • earlyaerly · ealry · earlly · earlyy · earrly · earyl · eraly
  • easyaesy · eassy · easyy · eays · esay

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "early" and "easy" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (/ˈɜːɹ.li/ versus /ˈiːzi/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "early" or "easy"?
"easy" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #13,720 in our Portuguese list, against #15,563 for "early". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "early" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "easy" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #39,403 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "early" and "easy" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ear vs early". 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 #39,403 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list