Which to use
“doctor's” and “doctors” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #11,024
- “doctor's” frequency rank
- #2,728
- “doctors” frequency rank
- 13752
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | doctor's | doctors |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | A doctor’s surgery. | plural of doctor |
Same sound, different letters: doctor's vs doctors
Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 7 letters.
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
This is the hard kind. doctor's and doctors are pronounced identically (/ˈdɑktɚz/) and both work as anoun. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 13752, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
doctor's is recorded at frequency rank #11,024, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈdɑktɚz/. doctors is at rank #2,728, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈdɑktɚz/.
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 13752, this pair ranks #474,005 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of doctor's vs doctors
Shared letters: cdorst. Private to "doctor's": -. Private to "doctors": -.
"doctor's" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCC · "doctors" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCC
Known mistypes of this pair
- doctors ← dcotors · ddoctors · docctors · docotrs · doctorrs · doctorss · doctosr · doctros