douce
\dus\
The verdict
“douce” is a regularly-used French word, ranked #2,471 in French word frequency and used as a noun.
- #2,471
- frequency rank, French
- 5
- letters
- 6
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Terme affectueux souvent utilisé pour une personne de genre féminin.
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | douce |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | \dus\ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #2,471 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “douce” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for douce is 5 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \dus\. Corpus data places it at rank #2,471 in overall French word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Terme affectueux souvent utilisé pour une personne de genre féminin.".
Our generated misspelling index lists 6 likely wrong-spelling variants for douce, with forms such as "ddouce", "docue", and "doucce". Every one of these variants traces to a single-character edit -- an added or dropped letter, a swapped consonant, or a vowel swap -- the kind of slip a spell-checker is built to catch. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "duc", "due", "dure", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
No documented word history exists for this headword, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct French form is douce, spelled D-O-U-C-E.
Definition
- 1Terme affectueux souvent utilisé pour une personne de genre féminin.
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ddouce,docue,doucce,douec,duoce,oduce
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of douce - expressed in single-character edits (insert, delete, or swap one letter). Bigger bars stand out at a glance; a one-edit slip is the hardest to catch.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 French corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you spell "douce"?
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Using “douce”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is D-O-U-C-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \dus\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “duc” - see the side-by-side comparison. douce vs duc
- Browse more French words and confusable pairs in the same reference. French words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.