coolsvscoursWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#27,099
“cools” frequency rank
#47,550
“cours” frequency rank
74649
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cools cours
Definition third-person singular simple present indicative of cool three-month unit of television broadcasting corresponding to a natural season.

Letter map: cools vs cours

Shared letters muted; letters that set cools and cours apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

5 ch
cools
5 ch
cours

Part-of-speech tell for cools / cours

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: cools is averb and coursanoun. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 74649, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cools is recorded at frequency rank #27,099, classified as averb, pronounced /kuːlz/. cours is at rank #47,550, tagged as anoun.

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 74649, this pair ranks #35,692 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of cools vs cours

Shared letters: cos. Private to "cools": l. Private to "cours": ru.

"cools" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC  ·  "cours" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • coolsccools · colos · cols · coolls · coolss · coosl · ocols
  • coursccours · corus · courrs · courss · cousr · cuors

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "cools" and "cours" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "cools" is a verb and "cours" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "cools" or "cours"?
"cools" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #27,099 in our English list, against #47,550 for "cours". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pair "cools" vs "cours" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "cools" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "cours" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #35,692 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cools" and "cours" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cours vs Coutts". 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 #35,692 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