thudvsThunWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#33,056
“thud” frequency rank
#47,962
“Thun” frequency rank
81018
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature thud Thun
Definition The sound of a dull impact. A city and municipality of Bern canton, Switzerland.

Letter map: thud vs Thun

Shared letters muted; letters that set thud and Thun apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. thud and Thun follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

4 ch
thud
4 ch
Thun

Grammar separator: thud vs Thun

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: thud is anoun and Thunaname. On the page they differ by a single letter - d in “thud” becomes n in “Thun”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 81018, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

thud is recorded at frequency rank #33,056, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈθʌd/. 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 81018, this pair ranks #18,607 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of thud vs Thun

Shared letters: htu. Private to "thud": d. Private to "Thun": n.

"thud" · 4 letters · shape CCVC  ·  "Thun" · 4 letters · shape CCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • thud ← htud · thdu · thhud · thudd · tthud · tuhd
  • Thun ← htun · thhun · thnu · thunn · tthun · tuhn

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "thud" for "Thun" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "thud" is a noun and "Thun" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "thud" or "Thun" show up more?
"thud" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #33,056 in our English list, against #47,962 for "Thun". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "thud" and "Thun". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "thud" 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 #18,607 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "thud" 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 #18,607 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