Which to use
“door” is a noun and “down” is an adverb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #869
- “door” frequency rank
- #137
- “down” frequency rank
- 1006
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | door | down |
|---|---|---|
| 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. | From a higher position to a lower one; downwards. |
Where the eye mixes door and down
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: door is /do(ː)ɹ/ while down is /daʊn/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adverb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 1006, 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/. down is at rank #137, tagged as anadv, pronounced /daʊn/.
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 1006, this pair ranks #528,321 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of door vs down
Shared letters: do. Private to "door": r. Private to "down": nw.
"door" · 4 letters · shape CVVC · "down" · 4 letters · shape CVCC