Which to use
“wor” is a determiner and “worse” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #36,016
- “wor” frequency rank
- #1,381
- “worse” frequency rank
- 37397
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | wor | worse |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Our. | comparative form of bad: more bad |
Where the eye mixes wor and worse
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: wor is /wɔː/ while worse is /wɜːs/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “wor” sits inside “worse”, and the parts of speech differ too (determiner vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 37397, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
wor is recorded at frequency rank #36,016, classified as adet, pronounced /wɔː/. worse is at rank #1,381, tagged as anadj, pronounced /wɜːs/.
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 37397, this pair ranks #294,917 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of wor vs worse
Shared letters: orw. Private to "wor": -. Private to "worse": es.
"wor" · 3 letters · shape CVC · "worse" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV
Known mistypes of this pair
- worse ← owrse · wores · worrse · worsse · wosre · wrose · wworse