coutumièrevscouturiersWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: coutumière is a adjective, couturiers is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“coutumière” is an adjective and “couturiers” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#44,958
“coutumière” frequency rank
#49,005
“couturiers” frequency rank
93963
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature coutumière couturiers
Definition Féminin singulier de coutumier. Pluriel de couturier.

Where the eye mixes coutumière and couturiers

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 7 letters in sequence. coutumière (CVVCVCVVCV) and couturiers (CVVCVCVVCC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

10 ch
coutumière
10 ch
couturiers

Why the eye confuses coutumière with couturiers

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: coutumière is \ku.ty.mjɛʁ\ while couturiers is \ku.ty.ʁje\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 93963, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

coutumière is recorded at frequency rank #44,958, classified as anadj, pronounced \ku.ty.mjɛʁ\. couturiers is at rank #49,005, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ku.ty.ʁje\.

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 93963, this pair ranks #1,921 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of coutumière vs couturiers

Shared letters: ceiortu. Private to "coutumière": mè. Private to "couturiers": s.

"coutumière" · 10 letters · shape CVVCVCVVCV  ·  "couturiers" · 10 letters · shape CVVCVCVVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • couturiers ← ccouturiers · cotuuriers · coutruiers · coutturiers · coutuirers · coutureirs · couturierrs · couturierss

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "coutumière" for "couturiers" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "coutumière" is an adjective and "couturiers" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "coutumière" or "couturiers" show up more?
"coutumière" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #44,958 in our French list, against #49,005 for "couturiers". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "coutumière" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "couturiers" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,921 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "coutumière" and "couturiers" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "coutumiers vs couturiers". 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 #1,921 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