Which to use
“our” is a determiner and “ours” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #9,528
- “our” frequency rank
- #4,358
- “ours” frequency rank
- 13886
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | our | ours |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Notre, nos | Plantigrade, carnassier ou omnivore, à fourrure épaisse, de la famille des ursidés. |
Where the eye mixes our and ours
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.
Look-alike desk: our vs ours
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: our is \aʊɚ\ while ours is \uʁs\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “our” sits inside “ours”, and the parts of speech differ too (determiner vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 13886, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
our is recorded at frequency rank #9,528, classified as adet, pronounced \aʊɚ\. ours is at rank #4,358, tagged as anoun, pronounced \uʁs\.
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 13886, this pair ranks #399,127 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of our vs ours
Shared letters: oru. Private to "our": -. Private to "ours": s.
"our" · 3 letters · shape VVC · "ours" · 4 letters · shape VVCC
Known mistypes of this pair
- ours ← orus · ourrs · ourss · ousr · uors
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "our" for "ours" ever safe?
In ordinary French text, does "our" or "ours" show up more?
Useful next steps
Eye-level mix-up between "our" and "ours" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "our" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "ours" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #399,127 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "our" and "ours" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "och vs our". 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 #399,127 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.