{"id":1470,"date":"2022-09-28T14:27:52","date_gmt":"2022-09-28T14:27:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thewordfinder.com\/blog\/?p=1470"},"modified":"2025-09-16T13:05:55","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T13:05:55","slug":"whoa-vs-woah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thewordfinder.com\/blog\/whoa-vs-woah\/","title":{"rendered":"Whoa vs. Woah"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Woah there! Have you checked your spelling skills lately? It\u2019s been a while since most of us were given spelling tests, and though autocorrect catches a lot of things, there are other terms it doesn\u2019t spot. Case in point: whoa vs. woah. <\/em>While your spell-checker might not notice this, only one of these words is correctly spelled. But which one is it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meaning of Whoa\/Woah<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Whoa or woah is an exclamation<\/a> that is \u201cused to express surprise, interest, or alarm, or to command attention.\u201d It can also be used as an order while horseback riding. You might hear the term in situations such as, \u201cWhoa, did you see how fast that car was going?\u201d or \u201cWoah there, Mrs. Knickerbockers, don\u2019t get scared; it\u2019s a rope, not a snake!\u201d (Mrs. Knickerbockers being the horse.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whoa has been a word for a long time, getting its start hundreds of years ago as part of Middle English. It derives from an even earlier English exclamation, \u201cho,\u201d as in, \u201cHo, who goes there!\u201d or \u201cHo! No you didn\u2019t!\u201d This usage of the term \u201cho\u201d has fallen out of favor, but the spinoff, \u201cwhoa,\u201d remains very popular today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is Whoa or Woah correct?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

So which word, whoa or woah, is correct? The term should be spelled<\/a> \u201cwhoa.\u201d Considering the origins of the word, that\u2019s not surprising: whoa is clearly derived from ho, <\/em>adding an extra letter to both the start and end of that word. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s worth noting it\u2019s probably not a big deal if you misspell \u201cwoah.\u201d Because it\u2019s a largely verbal expression, people aren\u2019t necessarily used to seeing it spelled out anyway. Odds are, most people wouldn\u2019t even notice if you spelled the word incorrectly. Some dictionaries, like Merriam-Webster<\/a>, have even gotten into the debate, noting that, if \u201cwoah\u201d continues to be commonly used, it may become an acceptable variant of \u201cwhoa,\u201d in the same way \u201cwhoa\u201d once became an accepted version of \u201cho.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, until an official addition is made, it\u2019s a good idea to try to get things right and use \u201cwhoa.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ways to remember the difference<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

There are a few different ways to remember the difference. One option is to remember the story of \u2018whoa\u2019 being derived from \u2018ho.\u2019 That can help you remember that the H and O should stay together and that the correct term is \u2018whoa.\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another option is to remember the word starts with W-H-O, or \u201cwho<\/a>.\u201d The first few times you spell out \u201cwhoa,\u201d think the word phonetically to yourself as \u201choo-ah.\u201d Once that sticks in your brain, it\u2019ll be easier to remember how to spell the word the next time you need to pull it out of your back pocket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our Other Grammar Resources<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Working on polishing up your English grammar? Check out some of our other grammar posts, including our color vs. colour post <\/a>and our piece on affect vs. effect.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Woah there! Have you checked your spelling skills lately? It\u2019s been a while since most of us were given spelling…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":1660,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-grammar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewordfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewordfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewordfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewordfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewordfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1470"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewordfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1472,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewordfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1470\/revisions\/1472"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewordfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewordfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewordfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewordfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}