dropvsduosWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#16,859
“drop” frequency rank
#25,286
“duos” frequency rank
42145
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature drop duos
Definition Coup de pied en demi-volée par lequel un joueur de rugby tente d’envoyer le ballon par-dessus la barre horizontale du but de l’équipe adverse. Pluriel de duo.

Where the eye mixes drop and duos

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

4 ch
drop
4 ch
duos

Visual trap between drop and duos

A purely visual mix-up. drop (\dʁɔp\) and duos (\dɥo\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 42145, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

drop is recorded at frequency rank #16,859, classified as anoun, pronounced \dʁɔp\. duos is at rank #25,286, tagged as anoun, pronounced \dɥo\.

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 42145, this pair ranks #227,876 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of drop vs duos

Shared letters: do. Private to "drop": pr. Private to "duos": su.

"drop" · 4 letters · shape CCVC  ·  "duos" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • dropddrop · dorp · dropp · drpo · drrop · rdop
  • duosdduos · dous · duoss · duso · udos

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "drop" for "duos" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\dʁɔp\ versus \dɥo\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "drop" vs "duos" - which ranks higher?
"drop" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #16,859 in our French list, against #25,286 for "duos". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "drop" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "duos" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #227,876 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "drop" and "duos" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "duos vs dust". 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 #227,876 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