cul vs ku, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#999
“cul” frequency rank: #22,917
“ku” frequency rank: 23916
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	cul	ku
Definition	Derrière d’un animal, d’un humain, ses fesses, son postérieur.	Lettre latine Q, q.

Same sound, different letters: cul vs ku

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 1 letter.

3 ch

cul

2 ch

Homophone desk: cul vs ku

This is the hard kind. cul and ku are pronounced identically (\ky\) and both work as anoun. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 23916, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cul is recorded at frequency rank #999, classified as anoun, pronounced \ky\. ku is at rank #22,917, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ky\.

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 23916, this pair ranks #349,718 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of cul vs ku

Shared letters: u. Private to "cul": cl. Private to "ku": k.

"cul" · 3 letters · shape CVC · "ku" · 2 letters · shape CV

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "cul" and "ku" be used interchangeably?

No. They are pronounced the same (\ky\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.

In ordinary French text, does "cul" or "ku" show up more?

"cul" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #999 in our French list, against #22,917 for "ku". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Sound matches; spelling doesn't. Use the exits below to lock the right form or check a cousin pair.

Full dictionary entry for "cul" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "ku" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #349,718 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"cul" and "ku" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ku vs ky". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #349,718 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.