# own vs OWS

> English confusable word pair

## The two words

### own
*adjective · IPA /əʊn/ · frequency rank #178*
Belonging to; possessed; acquired; proper to; property of; titled to; held in one's name; under/using the name of. Often marks a possessive determiner as reflexive, referring back to the subject of the clause or sentence.

### OWS
*name · frequency rank #48,950*
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.

## Source
Compiled from Wiktionary via kaikki.org (CC BY-SA). Data vintage: 2026-05-06.
Canonical page: https://plainspell.com/en/vs/own-vs-ows