doonvsdoorWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: doon is a adverb, door is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“doon” is an adverb and “door” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#45,338
“doon” frequency rank
#869
“door” frequency rank
46207
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature doon door
Definition Down. A portal of entry into a building, room, or vehicle, typically consisting of a rigid plane movable on a hinge. It may have a handle to help open and close, a latch to hold it closed, and a lock that ensures it cannot be opened without a key.

Where the eye mixes doon and door

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

4 ch
doon
4 ch
door

Visual trap between doon and door

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: doon is /duːn/ while door is /do(ː)ɹ/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by a single letter - n in “doon” becomes r in “door”, and the parts of speech differ too (adverb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 46207, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

doon is recorded at frequency rank #45,338, classified as anadv, pronounced /duːn/. door is at rank #869, tagged as anoun, pronounced /do(ː)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 46207, this pair ranks #213,965 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of doon vs door

Shared letters: do. Private to "doon": n. Private to "door": r.

"doon" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "door" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • doonddoon · dono · doonn · odon
  • doorddoor · doorr · doro

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "doon" for "door" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "doon" is an adverb and "door" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "doon" or "door"?
"door" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #869 in our English list, against #45,338 for "doon". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "doon" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "door" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #213,965 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "doon" and "door" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "doon vs dox". 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 #213,965 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