loservslouéeTell them apart

Which to use

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

#28,240
“loser” frequency rank
#25,724
“louée” frequency rank
53964
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature loser louée
Definition Personne sans succès social ou professionnel. Perdant, raté dans la vie. Pratique traditionnelle au cours de laquelle les domestiques proposaient leurs services. Cet usage avait lieu à la Saint-Jean (24 juin) pour les travaux des champs et à la Saint-Martin (11 novembre) pour les travaux d'hiver et de printemps.

Where the eye mixes loser and louée

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

5 ch
loser
5 ch
louée

Why the eye confuses loser with louée

A purely visual mix-up. loser (\lu.zœʁ\) and louée (\lu.e\) 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 3 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 53964, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

loser is recorded at frequency rank #28,240, classified as anoun, pronounced \lu.zœʁ\. louée is at rank #25,724, tagged as anoun, pronounced \lu.e\.

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 53964, this pair ranks #137,254 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of loser vs louée

Shared letters: elo. Private to "loser": rs. Private to "louée": .

"loser" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "louée" · 5 letters · shape CVVVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • loserlloser · loesr · loserr · losre · losser · lsoer · olser

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "loser" for "louée" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\lu.zœʁ\ versus \lu.e\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary French text, does "loser" or "louée" show up more?
"louée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #25,724 in our French list, against #28,240 for "loser". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "loser" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "louée" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #137,254 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "loser" and "louée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "looser vs loser". 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 #137,254 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