thouvstooWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: thou is a noun, too is an adverb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“thou” is a noun and “too” is an adverb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#44,777
“thou” frequency rank
#13,484
“too” frequency rank
58261
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature thou too
Definition Écluse en pierre ou en béton permettant de vider lentement les étangs de la Dombes dans l'Ain. Aussi, également.

Same sound, different letters: thou vs too

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 2 letters.

4 ch
thou
3 ch
too

Ear matches; page differs - thou and too

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: thou and too carry the same recorded pronunciation, \tu\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is anoun, the other anadverb, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 58261, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

thou is recorded at frequency rank #44,777, classified as anoun, pronounced \tu\. too is at rank #13,484, tagged as anadv, pronounced \ˈtu\.

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 58261, this pair ranks #110,089 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of thou vs too

Shared letters: ot. Private to "thou": hu. Private to "too": -.

"thou" · 4 letters · shape CCVV  ·  "too" · 3 letters · shape CVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • thouhtou · thhou · thuo · tohu · tthou

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "thou" and "too" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "thou" is a noun and "too" an adverb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "thou" or "too" show up more?
"too" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #13,484 in our French list, against #44,777 for "thou". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

"thou" and "too" share a sound, keep the gloss open, then jump to the headword or a nearby trap.

  • Full dictionary entry for "thou" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "too" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #110,089 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "thou" and "too" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "thou vs tos". 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 #110,089 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