joinvsjourConfusable pair

Which to use

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

#38,380
“join” frequency rank
#141
“jour” frequency rank
38521
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature join jour
Definition Joint, interconnexion. Période de vingt-quatre heures, commençant généralement à minuit ; en certains lieux et à certaines époques, le jour commençait plutôt avec le lever ou le coucher du soleil.

Where the eye mixes join and jour

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

4 ch
join
4 ch
jour

Look-alike desk: join vs jour

A purely visual mix-up. join (\d͡ʒɔɪn\) and jour (\ʒuʁ\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 38521, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

join is recorded at frequency rank #38,380, classified as anoun, pronounced \d͡ʒɔɪn\. jour is at rank #141, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ʒuʁ\.

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 38521, this pair ranks #254,701 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of join vs jour

Shared letters: jo. Private to "join": in. Private to "jour": ru.

"join" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "jour" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • joinjion · jjoin · joinn · joni · ojin
  • jourjjour · joru · jourr · juor · ojur

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "join" for "jour" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\d͡ʒɔɪn\ versus \ʒuʁ\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary French text, does "join" or "jour" show up more?
"jour" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #141 in our French list, against #38,380 for "join". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "join" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "jour" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #254,701 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "join" and "jour" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "join vs jor". 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 #254,701 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