shipvsslipConfusable pair

Which to use

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

#19,271
“ship” frequency rank
#48,124
“slip” frequency rank
67395
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ship slip
Definition navio escorregão

Where the eye mixes ship and slip

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

4 ch
ship
4 ch
slip

Why the eye confuses ship with slip

A purely visual mix-up. ship (shĭp) and slip (/slɪp/) 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 a single letter - h in “ship” becomes l in “slip”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 67395, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ship is recorded at frequency rank #19,271, classified as anoun, pronounced shĭp. slip is at rank #48,124, tagged as anoun, pronounced /slɪp/.

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 67395, this pair ranks #4,632 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of ship vs slip

Shared letters: ips. Private to "ship": h. Private to "slip": l.

"ship" · 4 letters · shape CCVC  ·  "slip" · 4 letters · shape CCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • shiphsip · shhip · shipp · shpi · sihp · sship
  • sliplsip · silp · slipp · sllip · slpi · sslip

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "ship" and "slip" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (shĭp versus /slɪp/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "ship" or "slip" show up more?
"ship" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #19,271 in our Portuguese list, against #48,124 for "slip". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "ship" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "slip" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #4,632 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ship" and "slip" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "slip vs soap". 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 #4,632 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