josvsjouisWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: jos is a pronoun, jouis is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“jos” is a pronoun and “jouis” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#28,219
“jos” frequency rank
#36,019
“jouis” frequency rank
64238
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature jos jouis
Definition Abréviation de jo les. Première personne du singulier de l’indicatif présent de jouir.

Letter map: jos vs jouis

Shared letters muted; letters that set jos and jouis apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. jos runs 3 letters (CVC) against jouis's 5 (CVVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

3 ch
jos
5 ch
jouis

Part-of-speech tell for jos / jouis

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: jos is apronoun and jouisaverb. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 64238, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

jos is recorded at frequency rank #28,219, classified as apron. jouis is at rank #36,019, tagged as averb, pronounced \ʒwi\.

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 64238, this pair ranks #78,011 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of jos vs jouis

Shared letters: jos. Private to "jos": -. Private to "jouis": iu.

"jos" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "jouis" · 5 letters · shape CVVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • jouis ← jjouis · joius · jouiss · jousi · juois · ojuis

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "jos" and "jouis" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "jos" is a pronoun and "jouis" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "jos" or "jouis" show up more?
"jos" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #28,219 in our French list, against #36,019 for "jouis". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "jos" and "jouis".

  • Full dictionary entry for "jos" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "jouis" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #78,011 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "jos" and "jouis" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Josie vs jouis". 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 #78,011 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