tenvsThunWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: ten is a num, Thun is a name, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“ten” is a num and “Thun” is a name - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#959
“ten” frequency rank
#47,962
“Thun” frequency rank
48921
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ten Thun
Definition The number occurring after nine and before eleven, represented in Arabic numerals (base ten) as 10 and in Roman numerals as X. A city and municipality of Bern canton, Switzerland.

Letter map: ten vs Thun

Shared letters muted; letters that set ten and Thun apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. ten runs 3 letters (CVC) against Thun's 4 (CCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

3 ch
ten
4 ch
Thun

Grammar separator: ten vs Thun

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: ten is anum and Thunaname. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 48921, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ten is recorded at frequency rank #959, classified as anum, pronounced /tɛn/. Thun is at rank #47,962, tagged as aname.

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 48921, this pair ranks #188,519 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of ten vs Thun

Shared letters: nt. Private to "ten": e. Private to "Thun": hu.

"ten" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "Thun" · 4 letters · shape CCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Thun ← htun · thhun · thnu · thunn · tthun · tuhn

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "ten" and "Thun" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "ten" is a num and "Thun" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "ten" or "Thun" show up more?
"ten" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #959 in our English list, against #47,962 for "Thun". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "ten" and "Thun".

  • Full dictionary entry for "ten" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Thun" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #188,519 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ten" and "Thun" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Thun vs thunk". 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 #188,519 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