boirevsboneWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: boire is a verb, bone is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“boire” is a verb and “bone” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#1,984
“boire” frequency rank
#28,075
“bone” frequency rank
30059
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature boire bone
Definition Mettre un liquide dans sa bouche et l’avaler. Borne.

Letter map: boire vs bone

Shared letters muted; letters that set boire and bone apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

5 ch
boire
4 ch
bone

Part-of-speech tell for boire / bone

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: boire is averb and boneanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 30059, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

boire is recorded at frequency rank #1,984, classified as averb, pronounced \bwaʁ\. bone is at rank #28,075, tagged as anoun.

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 30059, this pair ranks #312,731 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of boire vs bone

Shared letters: beo. Private to "boire": ir. Private to "bone": n.

"boire" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV  ·  "bone" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • boirebboire · biore · boier · boirre · borie · obire
  • bonebbone · bnoe · boen · obne

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "boire" and "bone" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "boire" is a verb and "bone" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "boire" or "bone" show up more?
"boire" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,984 in our French list, against #28,075 for "bone". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "boire" and "bone".

  • Full dictionary entry for "boire" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "bone" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #312,731 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "boire" and "bone" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "bold vs bone". 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 #312,731 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