Which to use
“what” is a determiner and “whats” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #46
- “what” frequency rank
- #8,625
- “whats” frequency rank
- 8671
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | what | whats |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Which, especially which of an open-ended set of possibilities. | plural of what; used as a stand-in to collectively pluralize arbitrary instances of things. Often used along with whys, hows, etc. |
Letter map: what vs whats
Shared letters muted; letters that set what and whats apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. what runs 4 letters (CCVC) against whats's 5 (CCVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Part-of-speech tell for what / whats
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: what is adeterminer and whatsanoun. On the page they differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “what” sits inside “whats”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 8671, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
what is recorded at frequency rank #46, classified as adet, pronounced /wɒt/. whats is at rank #8,625, tagged as anoun.
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 8671, this pair ranks #501,311 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of what vs whats
Shared letters: ahtw. Private to "what": -. Private to "whats": s.
"what" · 4 letters · shape CCVC · "whats" · 5 letters · shape CCVCC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "what" for "whats" ever safe?
Which is more common, "what" or "whats"?
Useful next steps
Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "what" and "whats".
- Full dictionary entry for "what" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "whats" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #501,311 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "what" and "whats" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "whats vs whet". 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 #501,311 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.