casusvscousWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#48,398
“casus” frequency rank
#38,734
“cous” frequency rank
87132
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature casus cous
Definition Chute. Pierre à aiguiser utilisée par les faucheurs.

Letter map: casus vs cous

Shared letters muted; letters that set casus and cous apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. casus runs 5 letters (CVCVC) against cous's 4 (CVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
casus
4 ch
cous

Spelling & dictionary notes on casus vs cous

casus and cous are indexed as a confusable French pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 87132, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

casus is recorded at frequency rank #48,398, classified as anoun. cous is at rank #38,734, tagged as anoun, pronounced \kus\.

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 87132, this pair ranks #8,722 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of casus vs cous

Shared letters: csu. Private to "casus": a. Private to "cous": o.

"casus" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "cous" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • casus ← acsus · cassu · cassus · casuss · causs · ccasus · csaus
  • cous ← ccous · cosu · couss · cuos · ocus

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "casus" and "cous" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
Which is more common, "casus" or "cous"?
"cous" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #38,734 in our French list, against #48,398 for "casus". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "casus" and "cous".

  • Full dictionary entry for "casus" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "cous" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #8,722 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "casus" and "cous" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cakes vs casus". 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 #8,722 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