souvssryWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: sou is a noun, sry is an intj, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“sou” is a noun and “sry” is an intj - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#35,525
“sou” frequency rank
#48,505
“sry” frequency rank
84030
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature sou sry
Definition An old French copper coin equal to one twentieth of a livre or twelve deniers; one sou is to the livre as one shilling is to the pound. Abbreviation of sorry.

Letter map: sou vs sry

Shared letters muted; letters that set sou and sry apart highlighted. Shared run: 1. sou (CVV) and sry (CCV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

3 ch
sou
3 ch
sry

Part-of-speech tell for sou / sry

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: sou is anoun and sryanintj. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 84030, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

sou is recorded at frequency rank #35,525, classified as anoun, pronounced /suː/. sry is at rank #48,505, tagged as anintj.

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 84030, this pair ranks #12,736 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of sou vs sry

Shared letters: s. Private to "sou": ou. Private to "sry": ry.

"sou" · 3 letters · shape CVV  ·  "sry" · 3 letters · shape CCV

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "sou" for "sry" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "sou" is a noun and "sry" an intj, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "sou" or "sry" show up more?
"sou" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #35,525 in our English list, against #48,505 for "sry". 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 "sou" and "sry". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "sou" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "sry" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #12,736 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "sou" and "sry" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "sry vs sura". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #12,736 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list