coatvscourtWhat's the difference?

Which to use

“coat” and “court” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#3,867
“coat” frequency rank
#370
“court” frequency rank
4237
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature coat court
Definition An outer garment covering the upper torso and arms. An enclosed space; a courtyard; an uncovered area shut in by the walls of a building, or by different buildings; also, a space opening from a street and nearly surrounded by houses; a blind alley.

Where the eye mixes coat and court

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

4 ch
coat
5 ch
court

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

A purely visual mix-up. coat (/ˈkoʊ̯t/) and court (/kɔːt/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 4237, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

coat is recorded at frequency rank #3,867, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈkoʊ̯t/. court is at rank #370, tagged as anoun, pronounced /kɔːt/.

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 4237, this pair ranks #519,557 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of coat vs court

Shared letters: cot. Private to "coat": a. Private to "court": ru.

"coat" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "court" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • coatcaot · ccoat · coatt · cota · ocat
  • courtccourt · corut · courrt · courtt · coutr · cuort · ocurt

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "coat" and "court" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (/ˈkoʊ̯t/ versus /kɔːt/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "coat" or "court"?
"court" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #370 in our English list, against #3,867 for "coat". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list