Ton or tonne?
ton is a noun meaning “The short ton of 2000 pounds (about 907 kg), 20 hundredweights of 100 pounds…”; tonne is a noun meaning “A unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms”. They sound the same (/tʌn/). In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) ton is about 12 times as common as tonne.
What is the difference between ton and tonne?
| ton | tonne | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | noun, suffix | noun |
| Meaning | The short ton of 2000 pounds (about 907 kg), 20 hundredweights of 100 pounds avoirdupois each The long ton of 2240 pounds (about 1016 kg), 20 hundredweights of 112 pounds avoirdupois each Fashion, the current style, the vogue | A unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms |
| Example | I’ve got a ton of work to do | none recorded |
| Forms | tons | tonnes |
| Pronunciation | /tʌn/ /tʊn/ /tɔ̃/ | /tʌn/ /tʊn/ /tɒn/ |
| In writing | 19 times per million words | 1.6 times per million words |
Sources: ton and tonne in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of ton and tonne
ton
- 1
The short ton of 2000 pounds (about 907 kg), 20 hundredweights of 100 pounds avoirdupois each
- 2
Fashion, the current style, the vogue
- 3
Synonym of tunny, particularly the common tunny or horse mackerel
- 4
Place-name suffix, originally denoting a town or enclosure of buildings
Washington
- 5
Initialism of threshold odor number
- 6
The long ton of 2240 pounds (about 1016 kg), 20 hundredweights of 112 pounds avoirdupois each
- 7
Fashionable society; those in style
- 8
A set of specific objects or persons
singleton
tonne
- 1
A unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, ton or tonne?
ton appears 19 times per million words; tonne 1.6 times per million words.
ton 19 times per million wordstonne 1.6 times per million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search ton vs tonne?
“ton vs tonne” is searched about 8,100 times a month on Google and 130 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“tonne vs ton”, “ton or tonne”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.