horavshoursConfusable pair

Which to use

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

#49,403
“hora” frequency rank
#388
“hours” frequency rank
49791
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature hora hours
Definition A circle dance popular in the Balkans, Israel and Yiddish culture worldwide. plural of hour

Letter map: hora vs hours

Shared letters muted; letters that set hora and hours apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

4 ch
hora
5 ch
hours

Corpus notes: hora and hours

hora and hours are indexed as a confusable English pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 49791, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

hora is recorded at frequency rank #49,403, classified as anoun. hours is at rank #388, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈaʊə(ɹ)z/.

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 49791, this pair ranks #180,241 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of hora vs hours

Shared letters: hor. Private to "hora": a. Private to "hours": su.

"hora" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "hours" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • horahhora · hoar · horra · hroa · ohra
  • hourshhours · hourrs · hourss · housr · huors · ohurs

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "hora" for "hours" ever safe?
No. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
In ordinary English text, does "hora" or "hours" show up more?
"hours" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #388 in our English list, against #49,403 for "hora". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Pair "hora" vs "hours" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "hora" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "hours" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #180,241 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "hora" and "hours" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "hoke vs hora". 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 #180,241 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