flouvsflousConfusable pair

Which to use

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

#7,440
“flou” frequency rank
#30,613
“flous” frequency rank
38053
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature flou flous
Definition D'un coloris sans vigueur, qui manque de netteté des contours ou des arêtes. Masculin pluriel de flou.

Same sound, different letters: flou vs flous

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 4 letters.

4 ch
flou
5 ch
flous

Ear matches; page differs - flou and flous

This is the hard kind. flou and flous are pronounced identically (\flu\) and both work as anadjective. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “flou” sits inside “flous”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 38053, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

flou is recorded at frequency rank #7,440, classified as anadj, pronounced \flu\. flous is at rank #30,613, tagged as anadj, pronounced \flu\.

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 38053, this pair ranks #258,003 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of flou vs flous

Shared letters: flou. Private to "flou": -. Private to "flous": s.

"flou" · 4 letters · shape CCVV  ·  "flous" · 5 letters · shape CCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • floufflou · fllou · folu · lfou
  • flousfflous · fllous · flosu · flouss · fluos · folus · lfous

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "flou" and "flous" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are pronounced the same (\flu\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
Frequency check: "flou" vs "flous" - which ranks higher?
"flou" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #7,440 in our French list, against #30,613 for "flous". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Sound matches; spelling doesn't. Use the exits below to lock the right form or check a cousin pair.

  • Full dictionary entry for "flou" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "flous" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #258,003 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "flou" and "flous" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "flour vs flous". 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 #258,003 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