dérivervsdriverWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#25,632
“dériver” frequency rank
#19,812
“driver” frequency rank
45444
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature dériver driver
Definition Détourner un cours d’eau. Club de golf.

Where the eye mixes dériver and driver

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 6 letters in sequence.

7 ch
dériver
6 ch
driver

Look-alike desk: dériver vs driver

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: dériver is \de.ʁi.ve\ while driver is \dʁaj.vœʁ\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 45444, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

dériver is recorded at frequency rank #25,632, classified as averb, pronounced \de.ʁi.ve\. driver is at rank #19,812, tagged as anoun, pronounced \dʁaj.vœʁ\.

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 45444, this pair ranks #202,667 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of dériver vs driver

Shared letters: deirv. Private to "dériver": é. Private to "driver": -.

"dériver" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCVC  ·  "driver" · 6 letters · shape CCVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • driverddriver · dirver · drievr · driverr · drivre · drivver · drriver · drvier

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "dériver" for "driver" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "dériver" is a verb and "driver" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "dériver" or "driver" show up more?
"driver" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #19,812 in our French list, against #25,632 for "dériver". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "dériver" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "driver" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #202,667 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "dériver" and "driver" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "délier vs dériver". 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 #202,667 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