Which to use
“who's” is a contraction and “whores” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #1,512
- “who's” frequency rank
- #18,463
- “whores” frequency rank
- 19975
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | who's | whores |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Who is. | plural of whore |
Letter map: who's vs whores
Shared letters muted; letters that set who's and whores apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. who's runs 4 letters (CCVC) against whores's 6 (CCVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Part-of-speech tell for who's / whores
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: who's is acontraction and whoresanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 19975, 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/. whores is at rank #18,463, 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 19975, this pair ranks #434,392 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of who's vs whores
Shared letters: hosw. Private to "who's": -. Private to "whores": er.
"who's" · 4 letters · shape CCVC · "whores" · 6 letters · shape CCVCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
- whores ← hwores · whhores · whoers · whoress · whorres · whorse · whroes · wohres
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "who's" for "whores" ever safe?
Frequency check: "who's" vs "whores" - which ranks higher?
Useful next steps
Pair "who's" vs "whores" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.
- Full dictionary entry for "who's" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "whores" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #434,392 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "who's" and "whores" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "whores vs whorl". 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 #434,392 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.