butsvsButtTell them apart

Which to use

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

#1,471
“buts” frequency rank
#46,624
“Butt” frequency rank
48095
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature buts Butt
Definition Pluriel de but. Flet, fléteau Platichthys flesus

Where the eye mixes buts and Butt

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

4 ch
buts
4 ch
Butt

Look-alike desk: buts vs Butt

A purely visual mix-up. buts (\byt\) and Butt (\bʊt\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by a single letter - s in “buts” becomes t in “Butt”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 48095, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

buts is recorded at frequency rank #1,471, classified as anoun, pronounced \byt\. Butt is at rank #46,624, tagged as anoun, pronounced \bʊt\.

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 48095, this pair ranks #181,671 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of buts vs Butt

Shared letters: btu. Private to "buts": s. Private to "Butt": -.

"buts" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "Butt" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • butsbbuts · btus · bust · butss · butts · ubts
  • Buttbbutt · btut · ubtt

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "buts" for "Butt" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\byt\ versus \bʊt\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary French text, does "buts" or "Butt" show up more?
"buts" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,471 in our French list, against #46,624 for "Butt". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "buts" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Butt" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #181,671 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "buts" and "Butt" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "bury vs Butt". 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 #181,671 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