shinevsshipConfusable pair

Which to use

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

#29,148
“shine” frequency rank
#19,271
“ship” frequency rank
48419
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature shine ship
Definition brilho navio

Where the eye mixes shine and ship

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

5 ch
shine
4 ch
ship

Visual trap between shine and ship

A purely visual mix-up. shine (/ʃaɪn/) and ship (shĭp) 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 48419, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

shine is recorded at frequency rank #29,148, classified as anoun, pronounced /ʃaɪn/. ship is at rank #19,271, tagged as anoun, pronounced shĭp.

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 48419, this pair ranks #16,747 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of shine vs ship

Shared letters: his. Private to "shine": en. Private to "ship": p.

"shine" · 5 letters · shape CCVCV  ·  "ship" · 4 letters · shape CCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • shinehsine · shhine · shien · shinne · shnie · sihne · sshine
  • shiphsip · shhip · shipp · shpi · sihp · sship

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "shine" and "ship" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (/ʃaɪn/ versus shĭp) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "shine" or "ship"?
"ship" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #19,271 in our Portuguese list, against #29,148 for "shine". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "shine" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "ship" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #16,747 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "shine" and "ship" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "shine vs sire". 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 #16,747 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