DammevsdormeTell them apart

Quick tell: Damme is a noun, dorme is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“Damme” is a noun and “dorme” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#36,346
“Damme” frequency rank
#30,132
“dorme” frequency rank
66478
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Damme dorme
Definition Variante du datif singulier de Damm. Première personne du singulier du présent du subjonctif de dormir.

Where the eye mixes Damme and dorme

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. Damme and dorme follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

5 ch
Damme
5 ch
dorme

Look-alike desk: Damme vs dorme

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: Damme is \ˈdamə\ while dorme is \dɔʁm\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 66478, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Damme is recorded at frequency rank #36,346, classified as anoun, pronounced \ˈdamə\. dorme is at rank #30,132, tagged as averb, pronounced \dɔʁm\.

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 66478, this pair ranks #67,627 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of Damme vs dorme

Shared letters: dem. Private to "Damme": a. Private to "dorme": or.

"Damme" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "dorme" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Damme ← admme · damem · ddamme · dmame
  • dorme ← ddorme · domre · dorem · dormme · dorrme · drome · odrme

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "Damme" for "dorme" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Damme" is a noun and "dorme" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "Damme" or "dorme" show up more?
"dorme" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #30,132 in our French list, against #36,346 for "Damme". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "Damme" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "dorme" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #67,627 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Damme" and "dorme" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Damme vs damned". 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 #67,627 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