douéesvsdupesWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#46,709
“douées” frequency rank
#24,552
“dupes” frequency rank
71261
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature douées dupes
Definition Féminin pluriel de doué. Pluriel de dupe.

Where the eye mixes douées and dupes

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. douées runs 6 letters (CVVVVC) against dupes's 5 (CVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
douées
5 ch
dupes

Look-alike desk: douées vs dupes

A purely visual mix-up. douées (\dwe\) and dupes (\dyp\) 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 71261, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

douées is recorded at frequency rank #46,709, classified as anadj, pronounced \dwe\. dupes is at rank #24,552, tagged as anadj, pronounced \dyp\.

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 71261, this pair ranks #48,219 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of douées vs dupes

Shared letters: desu. Private to "douées": oé. Private to "dupes": p.

"douées" · 6 letters · shape CVVVVC  ·  "dupes" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • dupes ← ddupes · dpues · dueps · dupess · duppes · dupse · udpes

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "douées" and "dupes" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (\dwe\ versus \dyp\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "douées" or "dupes"?
"dupes" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #24,552 in our French list, against #46,709 for "douées". 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 "douées" and "dupes" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "douées" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "dupes" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #48,219 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "douées" and "dupes" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Dombes vs douées". 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 #48,219 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