Which to use
“auteur” and “auteure” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #624
- “auteur” frequency rank
- #9,272
- “auteure” frequency rank
- 9896
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | auteur | auteure |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Personne qui est à l’origine de quelque chose. | Créatrice d’une œuvre littéraire. |
Same sound, different letters: auteur vs auteure
Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 6 letters.
Homophone desk: auteur vs auteure
This is the hard kind. auteur and auteure are pronounced identically (\o.tœʁ\) and both work as anoun. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “auteur” sits inside “auteure”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 9896, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
auteur is recorded at frequency rank #624, classified as anoun, pronounced \o.tœʁ\. auteure is at rank #9,272, tagged as anoun, pronounced \o.tœʁ\.
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 9896, this pair ranks #415,006 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of auteur vs auteure
Shared letters: aertu. Private to "auteur": -. Private to "auteure": -.
"auteur" · 6 letters · shape VVCVVC · "auteure" · 7 letters · shape VVCVVCV
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "auteur" and "auteure" mean the same thing in a sentence?
In ordinary French text, does "auteur" or "auteure" show up more?
Useful next steps
Sound matches; spelling doesn't. Use the exits below to lock the right form or check a cousin pair.
- Full dictionary entry for "auteur" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "auteure" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #415,006 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "auteur" and "auteure" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "auteure vs autours". 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 #415,006 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.