shipvssupWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#19,271
“ship” frequency rank
#25,150
“sup” frequency rank
44421
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ship sup
Definition navio abutre

Where the eye mixes ship and sup

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

4 ch
ship
3 ch
sup

Look-alike desk: ship vs sup

A purely visual mix-up. ship (shĭp) and sup (/sʊp/) 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 44421, 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. sup is at rank #25,150, tagged as anoun, pronounced /sʊp/.

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 44421, this pair ranks #21,065 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of ship vs sup

Shared letters: ps. Private to "ship": hi. Private to "sup": u.

"ship" · 4 letters · shape CCVC  ·  "sup" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • shiphsip · shhip · shipp · shpi · sihp · sship

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "ship" and "sup" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (shĭp versus /sʊp/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "ship" vs "sup" - which ranks higher?
"ship" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #19,271 in our Portuguese list, against #25,150 for "sup". 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 "ship" and "sup" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "ship" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "sup" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #21,065 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ship" and "sup" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "soap vs sup". 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 #21,065 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