BohrvsburWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: Bohr is a name, bur is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“Bohr” is a name and “bur” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#44,090
“Bohr” frequency rank
#39,230
“bur” frequency rank
83320
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Bohr bur
Definition A surname. A rough, prickly husk around the seeds or fruit of some plants.

Letter map: Bohr vs bur

Shared letters muted; letters that set Bohr and bur apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. Bohr runs 4 letters (CVCC) against bur's 3 (CVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
Bohr
3 ch
bur

Role in the sentence - Bohr and bur

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: Bohr is aname and buranoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 83320, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Bohr is recorded at frequency rank #44,090, classified as aname. bur is at rank #39,230, tagged as anoun, pronounced /bɝ/.

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 83320, this pair ranks #14,057 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of Bohr vs bur

Shared letters: br. Private to "Bohr": ho. Private to "bur": u.

"Bohr" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "bur" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Bohr ← bbohr · bhor · bohhr · bohrr · borh · obhr

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "Bohr" for "bur" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Bohr" is a name and "bur" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "Bohr" or "bur"?
"bur" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #39,230 in our English list, against #44,090 for "Bohr". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Pair "Bohr" vs "bur" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "Bohr" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "bur" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #14,057 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Bohr" and "bur" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Boers vs Bohr". 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 #14,057 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