cossevscourseWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#33,195
“cosse” frequency rank
#1,059
“course” frequency rank
34254
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cosse course
Definition Enveloppe de la graine, gousse, écorce. Action de courir, mouvement de celui qui court.

Where the eye mixes cosse and course

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.

5 ch
cosse
6 ch
course

Look-alike desk: cosse vs course

A purely visual mix-up. cosse (\kɔs\) and course (\kuʁs\) 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 34254, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cosse is recorded at frequency rank #33,195, classified as anoun, pronounced \kɔs\. course is at rank #1,059, tagged as anoun, pronounced \kuʁs\.

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 34254, this pair ranks #285,098 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of cosse vs course

Shared letters: ceos. Private to "cosse": -. Private to "course": ru.

"cosse" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "course" · 6 letters · shape CVVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • cosseccosse · cose · coses · csose · ocsse
  • courseccourse · coruse · coures · courrse · coursse · cousre · cuorse · ocurse

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "cosse" and "course" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (\kɔs\ versus \kuʁs\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "cosse" or "course"?
"course" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,059 in our French list, against #33,195 for "cosse". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "cosse" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "course" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #285,098 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cosse" and "course" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "conde vs cosse". 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 #285,098 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