Which to use
“dour” is an adjective and “drury” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #49,880
- “dour” frequency rank
- #30,012
- “drury” frequency rank
- 79892
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | dour | drury |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Stern, harsh and forbidding. | Love, especially sexual love; courtship, sex. |
Letter map: dour vs drury
Shared letters muted; letters that set dour and drury apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.
Role in the sentence - dour and drury
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: dour is anadjective and druryanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 79892, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
dour is recorded at frequency rank #49,880, classified as anadj, pronounced /ˈdʊə/. drury is at rank #30,012, tagged as anoun.
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 79892, this pair ranks #21,043 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of dour vs drury
Shared letters: dru. Private to "dour": o. Private to "drury": y.
"dour" · 4 letters · shape CVVC · "drury" · 5 letters · shape CCVCV
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "dour" for "drury" ever safe?
Which is more common, "dour" or "drury"?
Useful next steps
Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "dour" and "drury".
- Full dictionary entry for "dour" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "drury" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #21,043 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "dour" and "drury" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "dour 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 #21,043 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.