Which to use
“door” and “dou” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #26,697
- “door” frequency rank
- #22,238
- “dou” frequency rank
- 48935
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | door | dou |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Porte. | Forme mutée de tou par adoucissement (t → d). |
Where the eye mixes door and dou
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.
Look-alike desk: door vs dou
A purely visual mix-up. door (\dɔɹ\) and dou (\ˈdu:\) 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 48935, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
door is recorded at frequency rank #26,697, classified as anoun, pronounced \dɔɹ\. dou is at rank #22,238, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ˈdu:\.
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 48935, this pair ranks #174,868 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of door vs dou
Shared letters: do. Private to "door": r. Private to "dou": u.
"door" · 4 letters · shape CVVC · "dou" · 3 letters · shape CVV
Known mistypes of this pair
- door ← ddoor · doorr · doro · odor
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "door" for "dou" ever safe?
In ordinary French text, does "door" or "dou" show up more?
Useful next steps
Eye-level mix-up between "door" and "dou" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "door" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "dou" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #174,868 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "door" and "dou" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "domi vs door". 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 #174,868 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.