Which to use
“fosse” and “fosses” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #7,964
- “fosse” frequency rank
- #16,882
- “fosses” frequency rank
- 24846
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | fosse | fosses |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Cavité dans le sol, le plus souvent artificielle. | Pluriel de fosse. |
Same sound, different letters: fosse vs fosses
Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 5 letters. fosse runs 5 letters (CVCCV) against fosses's 6 (CVCCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Ear matches; page differs - fosse and fosses
This is the hard kind. fosse and fosses are pronounced identically (\fos\) and both work as anoun. 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) - “fosse” sits inside “fosses”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 24846, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
fosse is recorded at frequency rank #7,964, classified as anoun, pronounced \fos\. fosses is at rank #16,882, tagged as anoun, pronounced \fos\.
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 24846, this pair ranks #344,241 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of fosse vs fosses
Shared letters: efos. Private to "fosse": -. Private to "fosses": -.
"fosse" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV · "fosses" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "fosse" and "fosses" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Which is more common, "fosse" or "fosses"?
Useful next steps
You've separated the homophone pair "fosse" / "fosses". Follow the links when you need the full entry or a neighbour that trips the same ear.
- Full dictionary entry for "fosse" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "fosses" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #344,241 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "fosse" and "fosses" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "foies vs fosses". 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 #344,241 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.