TaosvsthatsTell them apart

Quick tell: Taos is a adjective, thats is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“Taos” is an adjective and “thats” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#41,409
“Taos” frequency rank
#2,922
“thats” frequency rank
44331
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Taos thats
Definition Of or pertaining to the Taos people or language. plural of that

Letter map: Taos vs thats

Shared letters muted; letters that set Taos and thats apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. Taos runs 4 letters (CVVC) against thats's 5 (CCVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
Taos
5 ch
thats

Part-of-speech tell for Taos / thats

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: Taos is anadjective and thatsanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 44331, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Taos is recorded at frequency rank #41,409, classified as anadj, pronounced /taʊs/. thats is at rank #2,922, tagged as anoun.

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 44331, this pair ranks #231,638 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of Taos vs thats

Shared letters: ast. Private to "Taos": o. Private to "thats": h.

"Taos" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "thats" · 5 letters · shape CCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Taos ← atos · taoss · taso · toas · ttaos
  • thats ← htats · tahts · thast · thatss · thatts · thhats · thtas · tthats

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "Taos" and "thats" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Taos" is an adjective and "thats" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "Taos" vs "thats" - which ranks higher?
"thats" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,922 in our English list, against #41,409 for "Taos". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "Taos" and "thats".

  • Full dictionary entry for "Taos" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "thats" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #231,638 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Taos" and "thats" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Taf vs Taos". 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 #231,638 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