thou vs tol, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“thou” is a pronoun and “tol” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#5,558
“thou” frequency rank: #41,433
“tol” frequency rank: 46991
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	thou	tol
Definition	Nominative singular of ye (“you”).	Tall.

Letter map: thou vs tol

Shared letters muted; letters that set thou and tol apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch

thou

3 ch

tol

Grammar separator: thou vs tol

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: thou is apronoun and tolanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 46991, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

thou is recorded at frequency rank #5,558, classified as apron, pronounced /ðaʊ/. tol is at rank #41,433, tagged as anadj.

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 46991, this pair ranks #206,603 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of thou vs tol

Shared letters: ot. Private to "thou": hu. Private to "tol": l.

"thou" · 4 letters · shape CCVV · "tol" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

thou ← htou · thhou · thuo · tohu · tthou

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "thou" for "tol" ever safe?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "thou" is a pronoun and "tol" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

Frequency check: "thou" vs "tol" - which ranks higher?

"thou" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #5,558 in our English list, against #41,433 for "tol". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "thou" and "tol". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "thou" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "tol" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #206,603 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"thou" and "tol" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Taf vs tol". 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 #206,603 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.