teamvstehWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: team is a noun, teh is an article, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“team” is a noun and “teh” is an article - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#203
“team” frequency rank
#27,676
“teh” frequency rank
27879
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature team teh
Definition A set of draught animals, such as two horses in front of a carriage. Deliberate misspelling of the, for humorous, sarcastic, or facetious effect.

Where the eye mixes team and teh

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

4 ch
team
3 ch
teh

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: team is /tiːm/ while teh is /tɛ/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs article), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 27879, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

team is recorded at frequency rank #203, classified as anoun, pronounced /tiːm/. teh is at rank #27,676, tagged as anarticle, pronounced /tɛ/.

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 27879, this pair ranks #375,376 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of team vs teh

Shared letters: et. Private to "team": am. Private to "teh": h.

"team" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "teh" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • teametam · taem · teamm · tema · tteam

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "team" and "teh" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "team" is a noun and "teh" an article, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "team" or "teh"?
"team" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #203 in our English list, against #27,676 for "teh". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list