cairvscourTell them apart

Quick tell: cair is a verb, cour is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#47,515
“cair” frequency rank
#41,064
“cour” frequency rank
88579
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cair cour
Definition To go. A three-month unit of television broadcasting, corresponding to one of the four seasons.

Letter map: cair vs cour

Shared letters muted; letters that set cair and cour apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. cair and cour follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

4 ch
cair
4 ch
cour

Part-of-speech tell for cair / cour

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: cair is averb and couranoun. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 88579, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cair is recorded at frequency rank #47,515, classified as averb. cour is at rank #41,064, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈkʊə(ɹ)/.

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 88579, this pair ranks #6,165 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of cair vs cour

Shared letters: cr. Private to "cair": ai. Private to "cour": ou.

"cair" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "cour" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • cair ← acir · cairr · cari · ccair · ciar
  • cour ← ccour · coru · courr · cuor

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "cair" and "cour" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "cair" is a verb and "cour" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "cair" vs "cour" - which ranks higher?
"cour" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #41,064 in our English list, against #47,515 for "cair". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "cair" and "cour".

  • Full dictionary entry for "cair" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "cour" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #6,165 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cair" and "cour" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cair vs CCI". 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 #6,165 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