coupevscousueTell them apart

Which to use

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

#668
“coupe” frequency rank
#39,728
“cousue” frequency rank
40396
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature coupe cousue
Definition Action de couper. Cigarette industrielle, déjà roulée, par opposition à celle que l’on roule soi-même.

Where the eye mixes coupe and cousue

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

5 ch
coupe
6 ch
cousue

Visual trap between coupe and cousue

A purely visual mix-up. coupe (\kup\) and cousue (\ku.zy\) 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 40396, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

coupe is recorded at frequency rank #668, classified as anoun, pronounced \kup\. cousue is at rank #39,728, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ku.zy\.

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 40396, this pair ranks #240,839 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of coupe vs cousue

Shared letters: ceou. Private to "coupe": p. Private to "cousue": s.

"coupe" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV  ·  "cousue" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • coupeccoupe · copue · couep · couppe · cuope · ocupe
  • cousueccousue · cosuue · couseu · coussue · couuse · cuosue · ocusue

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "coupe" and "cousue" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (\kup\ versus \ku.zy\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "coupe" vs "cousue" - which ranks higher?
"coupe" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #668 in our French list, against #39,728 for "cousue". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "coupe" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "cousue" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #240,839 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "coupe" and "cousue" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "courus vs cousue". 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 #240,839 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