althovsautoTell them apart

Quick tell: altho is a conjunction, auto is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“altho” is a conjunction and “auto” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#44,055
“altho” frequency rank
#3,099
“auto” frequency rank
47154
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature altho auto
Definition Alternative spelling of although. Clipping of automatic (of a gearbox/transmission).

Letter map: altho vs auto

Shared letters muted; letters that set altho and auto apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

5 ch
altho
4 ch
auto

Part-of-speech tell for altho / auto

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: altho is aconjunction and autoanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 47154, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

altho is recorded at frequency rank #44,055, classified as aconj. auto is at rank #3,099, tagged as anadj, pronounced /ˈɔːtəʊ/.

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 47154, this pair ranks #205,091 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of altho vs auto

Shared letters: aot. Private to "altho": hl. Private to "auto": u.

"altho" · 5 letters · shape VCCCV  ·  "auto" · 4 letters · shape VVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • althoalhto · alltho · althho · altoh · alttho · atlho · latho
  • autoatuo · auot · autto · uato

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "altho" for "auto" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "altho" is a conjunction and "auto" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "altho" or "auto" show up more?
"auto" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,099 in our English list, against #44,055 for "altho". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

You've compared "altho" and "auto". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "altho" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "auto" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #205,091 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "altho" and "auto" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "algo vs altho". 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 #205,091 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list