tharvstourConfusable pair

Quick tell: thar is a adverb, tour is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#42,944
“thar” frequency rank
#1,112
“tour” frequency rank
44056
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature thar tour
Definition Nonstandard form of there. A journey through a particular building, estate, country, etc.

Letter map: thar vs tour

Shared letters muted; letters that set thar and tour apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. thar (CCVC) and tour (CVVC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

4 ch
thar
4 ch
tour

Part-of-speech tell for thar / tour

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: thar is anadverb and touranoun. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 44056, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

thar is recorded at frequency rank #42,944, classified as anadv. tour is at rank #1,112, tagged as anoun, pronounced /tɔː(ɹ)/.

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 44056, this pair ranks #234,101 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of thar vs tour

Shared letters: rt. Private to "thar": ah. Private to "tour": ou.

"thar" · 4 letters · shape CCVC  ·  "tour" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • thar ← htar · tahr · tharr · thhar · thra · tthar
  • tour ← otur · toru · tourr · ttour · tuor

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "thar" and "tour" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "thar" is an adverb and "tour" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "thar" or "tour" show up more?
"tour" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,112 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.

What to do next

Pair "thar" vs "tour" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "thar" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "tour" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #234,101 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "thar" and "tour" 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 #234,101 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