Commonly Confused Words

realize andnotice

Many students of English have trouble with these two verbs, using one where the other would be more appropriate. While they are similar in meaning, they are not identical, as we can see in the definitions and examples below, adapted from the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, 3rd edition.

The definitions of realize include the word "know", while the definition of notice includes "see,hear or feel". In other words, realizing is a cognitive event, something which involves thinking about a situation. Noticing is more of a physical event in which something comes to our attention through our senses. It is possible to notice something without realizing that it is important.

Pay attention to the contrast in these two sentences:

Here are a few examplesThese examples taken from the Bank of English corpus created by COBUILD at Birmingham University.

Here are some more examples from the Cobuild Corpus with realizeand notice taken out. Can you guess which ones originally had realize and which ones originally had notice?


  1. ....seems as though the ads in just about every magazine published for women are telling us that we should worry about the kind of little fine lines that form on dry skin. You pick up a magazine and an ad for a skin care product. The copy is talking about little fine lines that are beginning to form. The model, who is worried about these lines, looks as though she is twenty...

  2. ...since she was going to report you, too. And I remembered you told me once you didn't have one. Well, Mrs. Howard fussed and said how she wasn't going to go to jail on account of you. I didn't how scared of the law she is. Anyway, I calmed her down and told her I'd clean all the tanks in the humidifiers for her. She hates to do that, see." Mrs. Dambar thanked her for her intervention...

  3. ...because it was very important to her that she produce a happy family. Her motivation was a good one - to give her children a better home than she had had. But what she failed to is that you can't control people's experiences. You can't make people "be happy" because you tell them to....

  4. ...and found that the same problems had been noticed there. By the fall of 1986, Ted's obsession with eating and drinking had become a full-scale behavior problem. We didn't it during weekend visits as much as the house parents who had to deal with Ted on a regular basis. Finally we got another phone call. "Mr. Hart, we're worried about Ted..."

  5. ...crossed the Tsang Po on July 23, and reached the pilgrims' road on August 2 -- a total of eleven days. The reader is offered no explanation for this discrepancy. Though he did not immediately it, when he reached this tent his troubles -- at least his physical troubles -- were temporarily at an end. He was at first, however, more than a little apprehensive...

  6. ...learn to live in a changing body. And we can learn to love it, even when it wrinkles. I know that loving an aging body isn't always easy. It's hard to watch youth slip away in the mirror and that you're no longer growing up but growing old. Eventually the aging process forces you to give up an idealized forever-young image of yourself. How you feel about your aging image certainly...

  7. ...they spent more time working out than praying and were also employed as bodyguards and policemen during festivals. Few travelers to Lhasa failed to the presence of these unique men of the cloth, but none got to know them as well as Kawaguchi did, nor has anyone left us quite so full a description of them. For as always, much as he might...

  8. ...Gretchen propped her feet up on the railing and sighed. "Not now, please."
    "But it's worried me so much. I don't think it's fair that you should take so much blame. You've got to that it's no one's fault really. Things just happen."
    "What blame?" Puzzled, Gretchen turned to look at the girl. "It's not your fault the ambulance took so long getting there."
  9. Back to Index of Mistakes Back to Victoria Muehleisen's Home Page E-Mail to Vicky