amourvsavouéWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#408
“amour” frequency rank
#7,786
“avoué” frequency rank
8194
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature amour avoué
Definition Sentiment intense et agréable qui incite les êtres à s’unir. Qui est reconnu comme vrai.

Where the eye mixes amour and avoué

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. amour (VCVVC) and avoué (VCVVV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

5 ch
amour
5 ch
avoué

Why the eye confuses amour with avoué

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: amour is \a.muʁ\ while avoué is \a.vwe\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 8194, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

amour is recorded at frequency rank #408, classified as anoun, pronounced \a.muʁ\. avoué is at rank #7,786, tagged as anadj, pronounced \a.vwe\.

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 8194, this pair ranks #420,823 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of amour vs avoué

Shared letters: aou. Private to "amour": mr. Private to "avoué": .

"amour" · 5 letters · shape VCVVC  ·  "avoué" · 5 letters · shape VCVVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • amourammour · amoru · amourr · amuor · aomur · maour

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "amour" and "avoué" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "amour" is a noun and "avoué" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "amour" or "avoué" show up more?
"amour" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #408 in our French list, against #7,786 for "avoué". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "amour" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "avoué" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #420,823 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "amour" and "avoué" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "alloue vs avoué". 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 #420,823 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