bodyvsboldWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#13,118
“body” frequency rank
#48,947
“bold” frequency rank
62065
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature body bold
Definition Sous-vêtement moulant féminin sans manche qui couvre d’une seule pièce tout le buste et l’entrejambe. Hardi.

Where the eye mixes body and bold

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

4 ch
body
4 ch
bold

Why the eye confuses body with bold

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: body is \bo.di\ while bold is \bəʊld\. 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 62065, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

body is recorded at frequency rank #13,118, classified as anoun, pronounced \bo.di\. bold is at rank #48,947, tagged as anadj, pronounced \bəʊld\.

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 62065, this pair ranks #89,025 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of body vs bold

Shared letters: bdo. Private to "body": y. Private to "bold": l.

"body" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "bold" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • body ← bbody · bdoy · boddy · bodyy · boyd · obdy
  • bold ← bbold · bodl · boldd · bolld · obld

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "body" and "bold" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "body" is a noun and "bold" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "body" or "bold" show up more?
"body" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #13,118 in our French list, against #48,947 for "bold". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Eye-level mix-up between "body" and "bold" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "body" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "bold" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #89,025 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "body" and "bold" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "bold vs broad". 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 #89,025 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