donavsdotaWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: dona is a noun, dota is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“dona” is a noun and “dota” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#35,903
“dona” frequency rank
#44,989
“dota” frequency rank
80892
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature dona dota
Definition Sainte. Troisième personne du singulier du passé simple du verbe doter.

Letter map: dona vs dota

Shared letters muted; letters that set dona and dota apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. dona and dota follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

4 ch
dona
4 ch
dota

Part-of-speech tell for dona / dota

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: dona is anoun and dotaaverb. On the page they differ by a single letter - n in “dona” becomes t in “dota”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 80892, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

dona is recorded at frequency rank #35,903, classified as anoun. dota is at rank #44,989, tagged as averb, pronounced \dɔ.ta\.

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 80892, this pair ranks #19,905 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of dona vs dota

Shared letters: ado. Private to "dona": n. Private to "dota": t.

"dona" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "dota" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • dona ← ddona · dnoa · doan · odna
  • dota ← ddota · doat · dotta · dtoa · odta

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "dona" and "dota" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "dona" is a noun and "dota" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "dona" or "dota" show up more?
"dona" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #35,903 in our French list, against #44,989 for "dota". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

You've compared "dona" and "dota". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "dona" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "dota" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #19,905 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "dona" and "dota" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "dota vs dotant". 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 #19,905 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list