cornesvscourgesTell them apart

Which to use

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

#13,556
“cornes” frequency rank
#49,583
“courges” frequency rank
63139
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cornes courges
Definition Pluriel de corne. Pluriel de courge.

Where the eye mixes cornes and courges

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence.

6 ch
cornes
7 ch
courges

Why the eye confuses cornes with courges

A purely visual mix-up. cornes (\kɔʁn\) and courges (\kuʁʒ\) 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 63139, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cornes is recorded at frequency rank #13,556, classified as anoun, pronounced \kɔʁn\. courges is at rank #49,583, tagged as anoun, pronounced \kuʁʒ\.

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 63139, this pair ranks #83,546 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of cornes vs courges

Shared letters: ceors. Private to "cornes": n. Private to "courges": gu.

"cornes" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC  ·  "courges" · 7 letters · shape CVVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • cornesccornes · conres · corens · corness · cornnes · cornse · corrnes · crones
  • courgesccourges · coruges · cougres · couregs · courgess · courgges · courgse · courrges

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "cornes" for "courges" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\kɔʁn\ versus \kuʁʒ\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary French text, does "cornes" or "courges" show up more?
"cornes" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #13,556 in our French list, against #49,583 for "courges". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

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 "cornes" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "courges" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #83,546 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cornes" and "courges" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "courais vs courges". 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 #83,546 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