clousvsclubTell them apart

Which to use

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

#12,129
“clous” frequency rank
#550
“club” frequency rank
12679
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature clous club
Definition Zone protégée par des clous dans un passage clouté. Association groupant des membres ayant des activités collectives, des intérêts communs.

Where the eye mixes clous and club

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. clous runs 5 letters (CCVVC) against club's 4 (CCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
clous
4 ch
club

Look-alike desk: clous vs club

A purely visual mix-up. clous (\klu\) and club (\klœb\) 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 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 12679, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

clous is recorded at frequency rank #12,129, classified as anoun, pronounced \klu\. club is at rank #550, tagged as anoun, pronounced \klœb\.

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 12679, this pair ranks #404,255 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of clous vs club

Shared letters: clu. Private to "clous": os. Private to "club": b.

"clous" · 5 letters · shape CCVVC  ·  "club" · 4 letters · shape CCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • clouscclous · cllous · closu · clouss · cluos · colus · lcous
  • clubcclub · clbu · cllub · clubb · culb · lcub

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "clous" and "club" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (\klu\ versus \klœb\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary French text, does "clous" or "club" show up more?
"club" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #550 in our French list, against #12,129 for "clous". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "clous" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "club" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #404,255 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "clous" and "club" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "casus vs clous". 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 #404,255 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