What is the word for two similar words that can be confused?
e.g., immanent & imminent or proscription & prescription
The word describes frequently confused words, such as adapt, adopt, adept.
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@SvenYargs: Why don't you write it as an answer? 'Confusible' is the best term so far. – Decapitated Soul Dec 23 '20 at 9:54
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1Does this answer your question? Word for when one uses the wrong word in a sentence Confusables aka paronyms. @RegDwight. – Edwin Ashworth Jan 22 at 15:10
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@SvenYargs From the OED: Confusable Adj. Capable of being, or liable to be, confused. Also as n. plural (and with spelling -ible), things, esp. words, that may be confused. -- 1864 in Webster's Amer. Dict. Eng. Lang. ; and in later Dicts. -- 1985 Eng. Today Apr. 19/1 Much of this material deals with words or constructions which are often confused, and some even specialise in these ‘confusibles’. --- Post the answer - have this on me! – Greybeard Feb 9 at 20:35
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These words look alike because they are of the same length and vary by a letter. Therefore, they are orthographic neighbours to each other.
Orthographic neighbour—a word that differs from another word of the same length by only one letter.
Example
Given the word "cat", the words "bat", "fat", "mat", "cab", etc. are considered orthographic neighbors.
Evidently, these (a) look similar and (b) especially with autocorrect, might be frequently confused for one another.
answered Dec 23 '20 at 6:37
Sven Yargs informs us that Adrian Room, in The Penguin Dictionary of Confusibles (1979), calls them ... confusibles. His dictionary has useful entries for such similar-sounding terms as affect/effect, censor/censure, eruption/irruption, and Jacobean/Jacobin/Jacobite, but (for reasons unknown to me) it omits coverage of adapt/adept/adopt, eminent/immanent/imminent and prescription/proscription.
From the OED:
Confusable Adj. Capable of being, or liable to be, confused. Also as n. plural (and with spelling -ible), things, esp. words, that may be confused.
1864 in Webster's Amer. Dict. Eng. Lang. ; and in later Dicts. --
1985 Eng. Today Apr. 19/1 Much of this material deals with words or constructions which are often confused, and some even specialise in these ‘confusibles’.
If by "two similar words" you mean two words that sound alike, then the word for this is homophone. If you mean they are similar in the sense that they look alike (slightly different spelling), I don't think there is an exact word for that.
Merriam Webster defines homophone as
grammar: one of two or more words pronounced alike but different in meaning or derivation or spelling (such as the words to, too, and two)
