harbourvsTOWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: harbour is a noun, TO is an abbrev, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“harbour” is a noun and “TO” is an abbrev - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#46,722
“harbour” frequency rank
#589
“TO” frequency rank
47311
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature harbour TO
Definition Hafen KFZ-Kennzeichen für Torino (Turin)

Letter map: harbour vs TO

Shared letters muted; letters that set harbour and TO apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

7 ch
harbour
2 ch
TO

Grammar separator: harbour vs TO

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: harbour is anoun and TOanabbrev. On the page they differ by 5 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 47311, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

harbour is recorded at frequency rank #46,722, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. TO is at rank #589, tagged as anabbrev, pronounced […].

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 47311, this pair ranks #1,288,798 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of harbour vs TO

Shared letters: o. Private to "harbour": abhru. Private to "TO": t.

"harbour" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVVC  ·  "TO" · 2 letters · shape CV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • harbourahrbour · habrour · harbbour · harboru · harbourr · harbuor · harobur · harrbour

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "harbour" for "TO" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "harbour" is a noun and "TO" an abbrev, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "harbour" or "TO" show up more?
"TO" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #589 in our German list, against #46,722 for "harbour". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

You've compared "harbour" and "TO". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "harbour" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "TO" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,288,798 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "harbour" and "TO" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "harbour vs puzzles". 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 #1,288,798 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list