Which to use
“douter” is a verb and “doutes” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #5,445
- “douter” frequency rank
- #4,748
- “doutes” frequency rank
- 10193
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | douter | doutes |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Être dans l’incertitude, n’être pas sûr. | Pluriel de doute. |
Where the eye mixes douter and doutes
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence.
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: douter is \du.te\ while doutes is \dut\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by a single letter - r in “douter” becomes s in “doutes”, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 10193, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
douter is recorded at frequency rank #5,445, classified as averb, pronounced \du.te\. doutes is at rank #4,748, tagged as anoun, pronounced \dut\.
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 10193, this pair ranks #413,883 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of douter vs doutes
Shared letters: deotu. Private to "douter": r. Private to "doutes": s.
"douter" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVC · "doutes" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVC