Which to use
“femme” and “flemme” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #213
- “femme” frequency rank
- #10,327
- “flemme” frequency rank
- 10540
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | femme | flemme |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Être humain adulte de genre ou de sexe féminin (par opposition à fille, fillette, femme-enfant). | Envie de ne rien faire. |
Where the eye mixes femme and flemme
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence.
Why the eye confuses femme with flemme
A purely visual mix-up. femme (\fam\) and flemme (\flɛm\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 10540, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
femme is recorded at frequency rank #213, classified as anoun, pronounced \fam\. flemme is at rank #10,327, tagged as anoun, pronounced \flɛm\.
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 10540, this pair ranks #412,598 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of femme vs flemme
Shared letters: efm. Private to "femme": -. Private to "flemme": l.
"femme" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV · "flemme" · 6 letters · shape CCVCCV
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "femme" and "flemme" mean the same thing in a sentence?
In ordinary French text, does "femme" or "flemme" show up more?
Useful next steps
Eye-level mix-up between "femme" and "flemme" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "femme" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "flemme" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #412,598 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "femme" and "flemme" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "flame vs flemme". 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 #412,598 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.