ootvsourTell them apart

Quick tell: oot is a pronoun, our is a determiner, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“oot” is a pronoun and “our” is a determiner - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#42,307
“oot” frequency rank
#76
“our” frequency rank
42383
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature oot our
Definition anything Belonging to us, excluding the person(s) being addressed (exclusive our).

Where the eye mixes oot and our

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 1 letter in sequence.

3 ch
oot
3 ch
our

Why the eye confuses oot with our

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: oot is /uːt/ while our is /ˈaʊə(ɹ)/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (pronoun vs determiner), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 42383, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

oot is recorded at frequency rank #42,307, classified as apron, pronounced /uːt/. our is at rank #76, tagged as adet, pronounced /ˈaʊə(ɹ)/.

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 42383, this pair ranks #249,736 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of oot vs our

Shared letters: o. Private to "oot": t. Private to "our": ru.

"oot" · 3 letters · shape VVC  ·  "our" · 3 letters · shape VVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "oot" and "our" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "oot" is a pronoun and "our" a determiner, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "oot" or "our"?
"our" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #76 in our English list, against #42,307 for "oot". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Eye-level mix-up between "oot" and "our" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "oot" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "our" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #249,736 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "oot" and "our" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "omi vs oot". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #249,736 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