louéevslourdeWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#25,724
“louée” frequency rank
#4,775
“lourde” frequency rank
30499
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature louée lourde
Definition 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. Porte.

Where the eye mixes louée and lourde

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.

5 ch
louée
6 ch
lourde

Visual trap between louée and lourde

A purely visual mix-up. louée (\lu.e\) and lourde (\luʁd\) 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 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 30499, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

louée is recorded at frequency rank #25,724, classified as anoun, pronounced \lu.e\. lourde is at rank #4,775, tagged as anoun, pronounced \luʁd\.

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 30499, this pair ranks #309,920 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of louée vs lourde

Shared letters: elou. Private to "louée": é. Private to "lourde": dr.

"louée" · 5 letters · shape CVVVV  ·  "lourde" · 6 letters · shape CVVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • lourdellourde · lorude · loudre · lourdde · loured · lourrde · luorde · olurde

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "louée" for "lourde" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\lu.e\ versus \luʁd\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary French text, does "louée" or "lourde" show up more?
"lourde" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #4,775 in our French list, against #25,724 for "louée". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Eye-level mix-up between "louée" and "lourde" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "louée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "lourde" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #309,920 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "louée" and "lourde" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "louée vs louvet". 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 #309,920 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