écriavsécrouWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: écria is a verb, écrou is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“écria” is a verb and “écrou” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#44,272
“écria” frequency rank
#34,814
“écrou” frequency rank
79086
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature écria écrou
Definition Troisième personne du singulier du passé simple de écrier. Pièce d’assemblage mécanique d’acier, ou de toute autre matière solide, percée d’un taraudage, et dans lequel entre une vis ou une tige filetée en rotation.

Where the eye mixes écria and écrou

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

5 ch
écria
5 ch
écrou

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: écria is \e.kʁi.ja\ while écrou is \e.kʁu\. 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 79086, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

écria is recorded at frequency rank #44,272, classified as averb, pronounced \e.kʁi.ja\. écrou is at rank #34,814, tagged as anoun, pronounced \e.kʁu\.

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 79086, this pair ranks #24,104 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of écria vs écrou

Shared letters: cré. Private to "écria": ai. Private to "écrou": ou.

"écria" · 5 letters · shape VCCVV  ·  "écrou" · 5 letters · shape VCCVV

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "écria" and "écrou" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "écria" is a verb and "écrou" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "écria" or "écrou"?
"écrou" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #34,814 in our French list, against #44,272 for "écria". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list