loovslookTell them apart

Which to use

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

#47,432
“loo” frequency rank
#5,474
“look” frequency rank
52906
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature loo look
Definition Cabinets, toilettes, waters, petit coin (pièce destinée à faire ses besoins). Aspect, apparence, style, allure.

Where the eye mixes loo and look

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

3 ch
loo
4 ch
look

Why the eye confuses loo with look

A purely visual mix-up. loo (\lu\) and look (\luk\) 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 1 extra letter(s) - “loo” sits inside “look”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 52906, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

loo is recorded at frequency rank #47,432, classified as anoun, pronounced \lu\. look is at rank #5,474, tagged as anoun, pronounced \luk\.

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 52906, this pair ranks #144,431 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of loo vs look

Shared letters: lo. Private to "loo": -. Private to "look": k.

"loo" · 3 letters · shape CVV  ·  "look" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • lookllook · lok · loko · lookk · olok

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "loo" for "look" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\lu\ versus \luk\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "loo" vs "look" - which ranks higher?
"look" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #5,474 in our French list, against #47,432 for "loo". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "loo" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "look" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #144,431 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "loo" and "look" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "longo vs loo". 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 #144,431 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