toedvstotesWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: toed is a adjective, totes is an adverb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“toed” is an adjective and “totes” is an adverb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#35,990
“toed” frequency rank
#31,383
“totes” frequency rank
67373
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature toed totes
Definition Having (a specified number or type of) toes. Totally.

Letter map: toed vs totes

Shared letters muted; letters that set toed and totes apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. toed runs 4 letters (CVVC) against totes's 5 (CVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
toed
5 ch
totes

Part-of-speech tell for toed / totes

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: toed is anadjective and totesanadverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 67373, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

toed is recorded at frequency rank #35,990, classified as anadj, pronounced /təʊd/. totes is at rank #31,383, tagged as anadv.

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 67373, this pair ranks #63,598 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of toed vs totes

Shared letters: eot. Private to "toed": d. Private to "totes": s.

"toed" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "totes" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • toed ← oted · teod · tode · toedd · ttoed
  • totes ← ottes · toets · totess · totse · tottes · ttotes

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "toed" for "totes" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "toed" is an adjective and "totes" an adverb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "toed" vs "totes" - which ranks higher?
"totes" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #31,383 in our English list, against #35,990 for "toed". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "toed" and "totes". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "toed" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "totes" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #63,598 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "toed" and "totes" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "toed vs Toth". 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 #63,598 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