doorvsDOSWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#869
“door” frequency rank
#11,370
“DOS” frequency rank
12239
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature door DOS
Definition 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. Initialism of date of service.

Where the eye mixes door and DOS

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

4 ch
door
3 ch
DOS

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

A purely visual mix-up. door (/do(ː)ɹ/) and DOS (/diː oː ˈɛs/) 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 12239, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

door is recorded at frequency rank #869, classified as anoun, pronounced /do(ː)ɹ/. DOS is at rank #11,370, tagged as anoun, pronounced /diː oː ˈɛs/.

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 12239, this pair ranks #482,692 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of door vs DOS

Shared letters: do. Private to "door": r. Private to "DOS": s.

"door" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "DOS" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • doorddoor · doorr · doro

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "door" and "DOS" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (/do(ː)ɹ/ versus /diː oː ˈɛs/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "door" or "DOS"?
"door" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #869 in our English list, against #11,370 for "DOS". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

You've compared "door" and "DOS". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "door" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "DOS" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #482,692 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "door" and "DOS" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "DOS 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

PlainSpell is a reference corpus, not spelling advice. Verify unusual forms in context.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list