Which to use
“young” is an adjective and “yous” is a pronoun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #364
- “young” frequency rank
- #31,419
- “yous” frequency rank
- 31783
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | young | yous |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | In the early part of growth or life; born not long ago. | You. |
Where the eye mixes young and yous
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. young runs 5 letters (VVVCC) against yous's 4 (VVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Look-alike desk: young vs yous
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: young is /jʌŋ/ while yous is /juːz/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs pronoun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 31783, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
young is recorded at frequency rank #364, classified as anadj, pronounced /jʌŋ/. yous is at rank #31,419, tagged as apron, pronounced /juːz/.
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 31783, this pair ranks #343,241 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of young vs yous
Shared letters: ouy. Private to "young": gn. Private to "yous": s.
"young" · 5 letters · shape VVVCC · "yous" · 4 letters · shape VVVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "young" for "yous" ever safe?
Which is more common, "young" or "yous"?
What to do next
Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.
- Full dictionary entry for "young" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "yous" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #343,241 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "young" and "yous" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Yau vs yous". 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 #343,241 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.