Which to use
“du” is an article and “duty” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #17
- “du” frequency rank
- #20,990
- “duty” frequency rank
- 21007
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | du | duty |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Une quantité indéfinie de. Note d’usage : Utilisé avec un nom indénombrable. | Devoir. |
Where the eye mixes du and duty
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: du is \dy\ while duty is \ˈdju.ti\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “du” sits inside “duty”, and the parts of speech differ too (article vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 21007, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
du is recorded at frequency rank #17, classified as anarticle, pronounced \dy\. duty is at rank #20,990, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ˈdju.ti\.
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 21007, this pair ranks #365,341 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of du vs duty
Shared letters: du. Private to "du": -. Private to "duty": ty.
"du" · 2 letters · shape CV · "duty" · 4 letters · shape CVCV
Known mistypes of this pair
- duty ← dduty · dtuy · dutty · dutyy · duyt · udty