nos vs not, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“nos” is a noun and “not” is an adverb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#14,600
“nos” frequency rank: #23
“not” frequency rank: 14623
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	nos	not
Definition	plural of no	Negates the meaning of the modified verb.

Letter map: nos vs not

Shared letters muted; letters that set nos and not apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

3 ch

nos

3 ch

not

Role in the sentence - nos and not

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: nos is anoun and notanadverb. On the page they differ by a single letter - s in “nos” becomes t in “not”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 14623, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

nos is recorded at frequency rank #14,600, classified as anoun. not is at rank #23, tagged as anadv, pronounced /nɒt/.

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 14623, this pair ranks #468,916 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of nos vs not

Shared letters: no. Private to "nos": s. Private to "not": t.

"nos" · 3 letters · shape CVC · "not" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "nos" and "not" be used interchangeably?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "nos" is a noun and "not" an adverb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

Frequency check: "nos" vs "not" - which ranks higher?

"not" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #23 in our English list, against #14,600 for "nos". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

You've compared "nos" and "not". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "nos" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "not" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #468,916 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"nos" and "not" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "nos vs NPL". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #468,916 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.