parlor vs parlour, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#18,646
“parlor” frequency rank: #24,267
“parlour” frequency rank: 42913
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	parlor	parlour
Definition	The living room of a house, or a room for entertaining guests; a room for talking; a sitting-room or drawing room.	Commonwealth standard spelling of parlor.

Same sound, different letters: parlor vs parlour

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 6 letters. parlor runs 6 letters (CVCCVC) against parlour's 7 (CVCCVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch

parlor

7 ch

parlour

Ear matches; page differs - parlor and parlour

This is the hard kind. parlor and parlour are pronounced identically (/ˈpɑːlə/) and both work as anoun. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 42913, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

parlor is recorded at frequency rank #18,646, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈpɑːlə/. parlour is at rank #24,267, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈpɑːlə/.

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 42913, this pair ranks #244,975 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of parlor vs parlour

Shared letters: alopr. Private to "parlor": -. Private to "parlour": u.

"parlor" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC · "parlour" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

parlor ← aprlor · palror · parllor · parlorr · parlro · parolr · parrlor · pparlor
parlour ← aprlour · palrour · parllour · parloru · parlourr · parluor · parolur · parrlour

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "parlor" and "parlour" be used interchangeably?

No. They are pronounced the same (/ˈpɑːlə/), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.

Frequency check: "parlor" vs "parlour" - which ranks higher?

"parlor" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #18,646 in our English list, against #24,267 for "parlour". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've separated the homophone pair "parlor" / "parlour". Follow the links when you need the full entry or a neighbour that trips the same ear.

Full dictionary entry for "parlor" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "parlour" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #244,975 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"parlor" and "parlour" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "parlay vs parlor". 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 #244,975 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.