tourvstruWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: tour is a noun, tru is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“tour” is a noun and “tru” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#1,112
“tour” frequency rank
#28,061
“tru” frequency rank
29173
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature tour tru
Definition A journey through a particular building, estate, country, etc. Abbreviation of true.

Letter map: tour vs tru

Shared letters muted; letters that set tour and tru apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
tour
3 ch
tru

Part-of-speech tell for tour / tru

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: tour is anoun and truanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 29173, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

tour is recorded at frequency rank #1,112, classified as anoun, pronounced /tɔː(ɹ)/. tru is at rank #28,061, 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 29173, this pair ranks #365,224 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of tour vs tru

Shared letters: rtu. Private to "tour": o. Private to "tru": -.

"tour" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "tru" · 3 letters · shape CCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • tourotur · toru · tourr · ttour · tuor

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "tour" and "tru" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "tour" is a noun and "tru" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "tour" vs "tru" - which ranks higher?
"tour" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,112 in our English list, against #28,061 for "tru". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "tour" and "tru".

  • Full dictionary entry for "tour" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "tru" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #365,224 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "tour" and "tru" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Trav vs tru". 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 #365,224 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