o'svsopusWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#30,902
“o's” frequency rank
#23,619
“opus” frequency rank
54521
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature o's opus
Definition plural of the letter o A work of music or set of works with a specified rank in an ordering of a composer's complete published works.

Where the eye mixes o's and opus

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

3 ch
o's
4 ch
opus

Look-alike desk: o's vs opus

A purely visual mix-up. o's (/əʊz/) and opus (/ˈəʊpəs/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 54521, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

o's is recorded at frequency rank #30,902, classified as anoun, pronounced /əʊz/. opus is at rank #23,619, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈəʊpəs/.

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 54521, this pair ranks #140,441 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of o's vs opus

Shared letters: os. Private to "o's": -. Private to "opus": pu.

"o's" · 2 letters · shape VC  ·  "opus" · 4 letters · shape VCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • opusoppus · opsu · opuss · oups · pous

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "o's" for "opus" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (/əʊz/ versus /ˈəʊpəs/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "o's" or "opus"?
"opus" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #23,619 in our English list, against #30,902 for "o's". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "o's" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "opus" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #140,441 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "o's" and "opus" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "o's vs omi". 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 #140,441 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