actusvsartusWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: actus is a noun, artus is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“actus” is a noun and “artus” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#29,622
“actus” frequency rank
#40,127
“artus” frequency rank
69749
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature actus artus
Definition Pluriel de actu. Étroit, serré.

Letter map: actus vs artus

Shared letters muted; letters that set actus and artus apart highlighted. Shared run: 4.

5 ch
actus
5 ch
artus

Part-of-speech tell for actus / artus

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: actus is anoun and artusanadjective. On the page they differ by a single letter - c in “actus” becomes r in “artus”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 69749, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

actus is recorded at frequency rank #29,622, classified as anoun, pronounced \ak.ty\. artus is at rank #40,127, tagged as anadj.

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 69749, this pair ranks #53,968 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of actus vs artus

Shared letters: astu. Private to "actus": c. Private to "artus": r.

"actus" · 5 letters · shape VCCVC  ·  "artus" · 5 letters · shape VCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • actusactsu · acttus · actuss · acuts · atcus · catus
  • artusarrtus · artsu · arttus · artuss · aruts · atrus · ratus

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "actus" and "artus" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "actus" is a noun and "artus" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "actus" or "artus"?
"actus" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #29,622 in our French list, against #40,127 for "artus". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pair "actus" vs "artus" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "actus" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "artus" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #53,968 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "actus" and "artus" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "arti vs artus". 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 #53,968 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