told vs tore, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“told” is a verb and “tore” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#44,284
“told” frequency rank: #2,414
“tore” frequency rank: 46698
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	told	tore
Definition	Präteritum (simple past) des Verbs tell	Vulva

Letter map: told vs tore

Shared letters muted; letters that set told and tore apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch

told

4 ch

tore

Grammar separator: told vs tore

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: told is averb and toreanoun. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 46698, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

told is recorded at frequency rank #44,284, classified as averb, pronounced [təʊld]. tore is at rank #2,414, tagged as anoun, 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 46698, this pair ranks #1,310,122 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of told vs tore

Shared letters: ot. Private to "told": dl. Private to "tore": er.

"told" · 4 letters · shape CVCC · "tore" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

told ← otld · tlod · todl · toldd · tolld · ttold
tore ← otre · toer · troe · ttore

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "told" for "tore" ever safe?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "told" is a verb and "tore" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

Frequency check: "told" vs "tore" - which ranks higher?

"tore" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,414 in our German list, against #44,284 for "told". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Pair "told" vs "tore" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

Full dictionary entry for "told" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "tore" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #1,310,122 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"told" and "tore" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "told vs Tons". 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 #1,310,122 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.