losevsluceWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: lose is a noun, luce is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“lose” is a noun and “luce” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#34,601
“lose” frequency rank
#21,994
“luce” frequency rank
56595
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature lose luce
Definition Variante de lauze. Luire.

Letter map: lose vs luce

Shared letters muted; letters that set lose and luce apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
lose
4 ch
luce

Part-of-speech tell for lose / luce

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: lose is anoun and luceaverb. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 56595, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

lose is recorded at frequency rank #34,601, classified as anoun. luce is at rank #21,994, tagged as averb, pronounced \ˈlu.ʧe\.

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 56595, this pair ranks #120,113 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of lose vs luce

Shared letters: el. Private to "lose": os. Private to "luce": cu.

"lose" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "luce" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • losellose · loes · losse · lsoe · olse
  • lucelcue · lluce · lucce · luec · ulce

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "lose" and "luce" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "lose" is a noun and "luce" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "lose" vs "luce" - which ranks higher?
"luce" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #21,994 in our French list, against #34,601 for "lose". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "lose" and "luce".

  • Full dictionary entry for "lose" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "luce" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #120,113 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "lose" and "luce" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "lobo vs lose". 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 #120,113 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