bontévsboutsWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

“bonté” and “bouts” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#9,612
“bonté” frequency rank
#8,966
“bouts” frequency rank
18578
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature bonté bouts
Definition Qualité de ce qui est bon. Pluriel de bout.

Where the eye mixes bonté and bouts

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

5 ch
bonté
5 ch
bouts

Look-alike desk: bonté vs bouts

A purely visual mix-up. bonté (\bɔ̃.te\) and bouts (\bu\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 18578, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

bonté is recorded at frequency rank #9,612, classified as anoun, pronounced \bɔ̃.te\. bouts is at rank #8,966, tagged as anoun, pronounced \bu\.

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 18578, this pair ranks #377,597 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of bonté vs bouts

Shared letters: bot. Private to "bonté": . Private to "bouts": su.

"bonté" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "bouts" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • boutsbbouts · botus · boust · boutss · boutts · buots · obuts

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "bonté" and "bouts" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (\bɔ̃.te\ versus \bu\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "bonté" vs "bouts" - which ranks higher?
"bouts" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #8,966 in our French list, against #9,612 for "bonté". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "bonté" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "bouts" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #377,597 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "bonté" and "bouts" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "boers vs bouts". 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 #377,597 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