coosvscoursWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#39,755
“coos” frequency rank
#47,550
“cours” frequency rank
87305
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

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

Letter map: coos vs cours

Shared letters muted; letters that set coos and cours apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. coos runs 4 letters (CVVC) against cours's 5 (CVVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
coos
5 ch
cours

Grammar separator: coos vs cours

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: coos is averb and coursanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 87305, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

coos is recorded at frequency rank #39,755, classified as averb, pronounced /kuːz/. 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 87305, this pair ranks #7,803 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of coos vs cours

Shared letters: cos. Private to "coos": -. Private to "cours": ru.

"coos" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "cours" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • coos ← ccoos · cooss · coso · ocos
  • cours ← ccours · corus · courrs · courss · cousr · cuors

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "coos" for "cours" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "coos" is a verb and "cours" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "coos" or "cours" show up more?
"coos" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #39,755 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.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "coos" 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 #7,803 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "coos" 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 #7,803 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