ourvsOWSTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#76
“our” frequency rank
#48,950
“OWS” frequency rank
49026
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature our OWS
Definition Belonging to us, excluding the person(s) being addressed (exclusive our). Initialism of Occupy Wall Street: a protest movement that began in 2011 in New York City's Wall Street financial district, primarily opposing social and economic inequality, greed, corruption and the influence of corporations on government.

Letter map: our vs OWS

Shared letters muted; letters that set our and OWS apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

3 ch
our
3 ch
OWS

Part-of-speech tell for our / OWS

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: our is adeterminer and OWSaname. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 49026, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

our is recorded at frequency rank #76, classified as adet, pronounced /ˈaʊə(ɹ)/. OWS is at rank #48,950, tagged as aname.

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 49026, this pair ranks #187,541 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of our vs OWS

Shared letters: o. Private to "our": ru. Private to "OWS": sw.

"our" · 3 letters · shape VVC  ·  "OWS" · 3 letters · shape VCC

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "our" and "OWS" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "our" is a determiner and "OWS" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "our" or "OWS" show up more?
"our" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #76 in our English list, against #48,950 for "OWS". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "our" and "OWS".

  • Full dictionary entry for "our" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "OWS" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #187,541 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "our" and "OWS" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "omi vs OWS". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #187,541 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