thar vs their, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“thar” is an adverb and “their” is a determiner - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#42,944
“thar” frequency rank: #56
“their” frequency rank: 43000
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	thar	their
Definition	Nonstandard form of there.	Belonging to, from, of, or relating to, them (plural).

Letter map: thar vs their

Shared letters muted; letters that set thar and their apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

4 ch

thar

5 ch

their

Grammar separator: thar vs their

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: thar is anadverb and theiradeterminer. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 43000, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

thar is recorded at frequency rank #42,944, classified as anadv. their is at rank #56, tagged as adet, pronounced /ðɛə/.

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 43000, this pair ranks #244,145 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of thar vs their

Shared letters: hrt. Private to "thar": a. Private to "their": ei.

"thar" · 4 letters · shape CCVC · "their" · 5 letters · shape CCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

thar ← htar · tahr · tharr · thhar · thra · tthar
their ← hteir · tehir · theirr · theri · thheir · ttheir

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "thar" and "their" be used interchangeably?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "thar" is an adverb and "their" a determiner, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

Which is more common, "thar" or "their"?

"their" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #56 in our English list, against #42,944 for "thar". 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 "thar" and "their".

Full dictionary entry for "thar" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "their" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #244,145 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"thar" and "their" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "thar vs Trav". 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 #244,145 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.