teamvsterWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: team is a noun, ter is a particle, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#203
“team” frequency rank
#20,796
“ter” frequency rank
20999
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature team ter
Definition A set of draught animals, such as two horses in front of a carriage. Eye dialect spelling of to.

Letter map: team vs ter

Shared letters muted; letters that set team and ter apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
team
3 ch
ter

Grammar separator: team vs ter

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: team is anoun and teraparticle. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 20999, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

team is recorded at frequency rank #203, classified as anoun, pronounced /tiːm/. ter is at rank #20,796, tagged as aparticle.

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 20999, this pair ranks #427,143 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of team vs ter

Shared letters: et. Private to "team": am. Private to "ter": r.

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

Known mistypes of this pair

  • teametam · taem · teamm · tema · tteam

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "team" for "ter" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "team" is a noun and "ter" a particle, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "team" vs "ter" - which ranks higher?
"team" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #203 in our English list, against #20,796 for "ter". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

You've compared "team" and "ter". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "team" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "ter" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #427,143 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "team" and "ter" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Taf vs ter". 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 #427,143 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