Which to use
“dork” is a noun and “dour” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #25,359
- “dork” frequency rank
- #49,880
- “dour” frequency rank
- 75239
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | dork | dour |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | A quirky, silly or stupid, socially inept person, or one who is out of touch with contemporary trends and typically has unfashionable hobbies. (Overlaps conceptually with nerd and geek, but does not imply the same level of intelligence.) | Stern, harsh and forbidding. |
Where the eye mixes dork and dour
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: dork is /dɔːk/ while dour is /ˈdʊə/. 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 adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 75239, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
dork is recorded at frequency rank #25,359, classified as anoun, pronounced /dɔːk/. dour is at rank #49,880, tagged as anadj, pronounced /ˈdʊə/.
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 75239, this pair ranks #33,769 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of dork vs dour
Shared letters: dor. Private to "dork": k. Private to "dour": u.
"dork" · 4 letters · shape CVCC · "dour" · 4 letters · shape CVVC