couchantvscoûtantWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#22,220
“couchant” frequency rank
#37,752
“coûtant” frequency rank
59972
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature couchant coûtant
Definition Qui se couche. Qui coûte.

Letter map: couchant vs coûtant

Shared letters muted; letters that set couchant and coûtant apart highlighted. Shared run: 5. couchant runs 8 letters (CVVCCVCC) against coûtant's 7 (CVVCVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

8 ch
couchant
7 ch
coûtant

Spelling & dictionary notes on couchant vs coûtant

couchant and coûtant 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 59972, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

couchant is recorded at frequency rank #22,220, classified as anadj. coûtant is at rank #37,752, tagged as anadj, pronounced \ku.tɑ̃\.

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 59972, this pair ranks #100,146 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of couchant vs coûtant

Shared letters: acnot. Private to "couchant": hu. Private to "coûtant": û.

"couchant" · 8 letters · shape CVVCCVCC  ·  "coûtant" · 7 letters · shape CVVCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • couchant ← ccouchant · cocuhant · coucahnt · coucchant · couchannt · couchantt · couchatn · couchhant

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "couchant" and "coûtant" 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.
In ordinary French text, does "couchant" or "coûtant" show up more?
"couchant" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #22,220 in our French list, against #37,752 for "coûtant". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

You've compared "couchant" and "coûtant". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "couchant" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "coûtant" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #100,146 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "couchant" and "coûtant" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "count vs coûtant". 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 #100,146 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