Which to use
“who's” is a contraction and “whole” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #1,512
- “who's” frequency rank
- #333
- “whole” frequency rank
- 1845
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | who's | whole |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Who is. | Entire, undivided. |
Where the eye mixes who's and whole
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: who's is /huːz/ while whole is /həʊl/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (contraction vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 1845, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
who's is recorded at frequency rank #1,512, classified as acontraction, pronounced /huːz/. whole is at rank #333, tagged as anadj, pronounced /həʊl/.
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 1845, this pair ranks #526,493 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of who's vs whole
Shared letters: how. Private to "who's": s. Private to "whole": el.
"who's" · 4 letters · shape CCVC · "whole" · 5 letters · shape CCVCV
Known mistypes of this pair
- whole ← hwole · whhole · whloe · whoel · wholle · wohle · wwhole