Which to use
“durent” is a verb and “dureté” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #9,816
- “durent” frequency rank
- #18,464
- “dureté” frequency rank
- 28280
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | durent | dureté |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Troisième personne du pluriel du passé simple du verbe devoir. | Qualité de ce qui est dur. |
Where the eye mixes durent and dureté
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: durent is \dyʁ\ while dureté is \dyʁ.te\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 28280, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
durent is recorded at frequency rank #9,816, classified as averb, pronounced \dyʁ\. dureté is at rank #18,464, tagged as anoun, pronounced \dyʁ.te\.
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 28280, this pair ranks #323,804 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of durent vs dureté
Shared letters: dertu. Private to "durent": n. Private to "dureté": é.
"durent" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCC · "dureté" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV
Known mistypes of this pair
- durent ← ddurent · druent · duernt · durennt · durentt · duretn · durnet · durrent