OASvsoursWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: OAS is a name, ours is a pronoun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“OAS” is a name and “ours” is a pronoun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#44,377
“OAS” frequency rank
#5,527
“ours” frequency rank
49904
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature OAS ours
Definition Initialism of Organization of American States. That or those belonging to us.

Letter map: OAS vs ours

Shared letters muted; letters that set OAS and ours apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. OAS runs 3 letters (VVC) against ours's 4 (VVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

3 ch
OAS
4 ch
ours

Part-of-speech tell for OAS / ours

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: OAS is aname and oursapronoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 49904, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

OAS is recorded at frequency rank #44,377, classified as aname. ours is at rank #5,527, tagged as apron, pronounced /ˈaʊəz/.

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 49904, this pair ranks #179,203 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of OAS vs ours

Shared letters: os. Private to "OAS": a. Private to "ours": ru.

"OAS" · 3 letters · shape VVC  ·  "ours" · 4 letters · shape VVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • ours ← orus · ourrs · ourss · ousr · uors

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "OAS" for "ours" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "OAS" is a name and "ours" a pronoun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "OAS" vs "ours" - which ranks higher?
"ours" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #5,527 in our English list, against #44,377 for "OAS". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "OAS" and "ours". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "OAS" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "ours" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #179,203 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "OAS" and "ours" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "OAS 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 #179,203 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