hontevshotteConfusable pair

Which to use

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

#2,083
“honte” frequency rank
#39,336
“hotte” frequency rank
41419
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature honte hotte
Definition Déshonneur, opprobre, humiliation (ce qui est le sens étymologique et ancien). Sorte de panier, ouvrage du vannier, qui a des bretelles et qu’on porte sur le dos.

Where the eye mixes honte and hotte

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. honte and hotte follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

5 ch
honte
5 ch
hotte

Look-alike desk: honte vs hotte

A purely visual mix-up. honte (^((h aspiré))\ɔ̃t\) and hotte (^((h aspiré))\ɔt\) 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 a single letter - n in “honte” becomes t in “hotte”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 41419, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

honte is recorded at frequency rank #2,083, classified as anoun, pronounced ^((h aspiré))\ɔ̃t\. hotte is at rank #39,336, tagged as anoun, pronounced ^((h aspiré))\ɔt\.

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 41419, this pair ranks #233,259 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of honte vs hotte

Shared letters: ehot. Private to "honte": n. Private to "hotte": -.

"honte" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "hotte" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • honte ← hhonte · hnote · honet · honnte · hontte · hotne · ohnte
  • hotte ← hhotte · hotet · htote · ohtte

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "honte" and "hotte" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (^((h aspiré))\ɔ̃t\ versus ^((h aspiré))\ɔt\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "honte" or "hotte"?
"honte" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,083 in our French list, against #39,336 for "hotte". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Eye-level mix-up between "honte" and "hotte" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "honte" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "hotte" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #233,259 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "honte" and "hotte" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "hotte vs huttes". 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 #233,259 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