coolsvscroisTell them apart

Quick tell: cools is a adjective, crois is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“cools” is an adjective and “crois” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#22,813
“cools” frequency rank
#333
“crois” frequency rank
23146
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cools crois
Definition Masculin (et parfois féminin) pluriel de cool. Première personne du singulier de l’indicatif présent de croire.

Where the eye mixes cools and crois

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

5 ch
cools
5 ch
crois

Visual trap between cools and crois

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: cools is \kul\ while crois is \kʁwa\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 23146, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cools is recorded at frequency rank #22,813, classified as anadj, pronounced \kul\. crois is at rank #333, tagged as averb, pronounced \kʁwa\.

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 23146, this pair ranks #354,111 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of cools vs crois

Shared letters: cos. Private to "cools": l. Private to "crois": ir.

"cools" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC  ·  "crois" · 5 letters · shape CCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • coolsccools · colos · coolls · coolss · coosl · ocols
  • croisccrois · coris · crios · croiss · crosi · crrois · rcois

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "cools" for "crois" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "cools" is an adjective and "crois" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "cools" or "crois"?
"crois" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #333 in our French list, against #22,813 for "cools". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "cools" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "crois" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #354,111 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cools" and "crois" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cools vs coon". 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 #354,111 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