Which to use
“soft” is an adjective and “sous” is a preposition - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #16,832
- “soft” frequency rank
- #29,337
- “sous” frequency rank
- 46169
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | soft | sous |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | weich | unter (unterhalb von) |
Letter map: soft vs sous
Shared letters muted; letters that set soft and sous apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.
Part-of-speech tell for soft / sous
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: soft is anadjective and sousapreposition. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 46169, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
soft is recorded at frequency rank #16,832, classified as anadj, pronounced […]. sous is at rank #29,337, tagged as aprep, pronounced [su].
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 46169, this pair ranks #1,328,224 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of soft vs sous
Shared letters: os. Private to "soft": ft. Private to "sous": u.
"soft" · 4 letters · shape CVCC · "sous" · 4 letters · shape CVVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "soft" and "sous" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Which is more common, "soft" or "sous"?
What to do next
You've compared "soft" and "sous". Here's where to go from here.
- Full dictionary entry for "soft" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "sous" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #1,328,224 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "soft" and "sous" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "sous vs SUVs". 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 #1,328,224 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.