thugvsThunWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#15,532
“thug” frequency rank
#47,962
“Thun” frequency rank
63494
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature thug Thun
Definition A person who is a member of a gang or criminal organization. A city and municipality of Bern canton, Switzerland.

Letter map: thug vs Thun

Shared letters muted; letters that set thug and Thun apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. thug 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
thug
4 ch
Thun

Part-of-speech tell for thug / Thun

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: thug is anoun and Thunaname. On the page they differ by a single letter - g in “thug” becomes n in “Thun”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 63494, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

thug is recorded at frequency rank #15,532, classified as anoun, pronounced /θʌɡ/. 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 63494, this pair ranks #82,668 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of thug vs Thun

Shared letters: htu. Private to "thug": g. Private to "Thun": n.

"thug" · 4 letters · shape CCVC  ·  "Thun" · 4 letters · shape CCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • thug ← htug · thgu · thhug · thugg · tthug · tuhg
  • Thun ← htun · thhun · thnu · thunn · tthun · tuhn

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "thug" and "Thun" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "thug" is a noun and "Thun" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "thug" or "Thun"?
"thug" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #15,532 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 "thug" and "Thun". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "thug" 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 #82,668 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "thug" 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 #82,668 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