Which to use
“who'd” is a contraction and “whos” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #12,531
- “who'd” frequency rank
- #27,029
- “whos” frequency rank
- 39560
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | who'd | whos |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Who had. | plural of who; often used along with whats, whys, hows, etc. |
Letter map: who'd vs whos
Shared letters muted; letters that set who'd and whos apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. who'd and whos follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Role in the sentence - who'd and whos
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: who'd is acontraction and whosanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 39560, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
who'd is recorded at frequency rank #12,531, classified as acontraction. whos is at rank #27,029, tagged as anoun, pronounced /huːz/.
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 39560, this pair ranks #275,554 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of who'd vs whos
Shared letters: how. Private to "who'd": d. Private to "whos": s.
"who'd" · 4 letters · shape CCVC · "whos" · 4 letters · shape CCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
- whos ← hwos · whhos · whoss · whso · wohs · wwhos
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "who'd" for "whos" ever safe?
Which is more common, "who'd" or "whos"?
After this comparison
Pair "who'd" vs "whos" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.
- Full dictionary entry for "who'd" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "whos" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #275,554 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "who'd" and "whos" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "whorl vs whos". 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 #275,554 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.