louéevsloutreTell them apart

Which to use

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

#25,724
“louée” frequency rank
#32,056
“loutre” frequency rank
57780
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature louée loutre
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. Espèce de mammifère carnivore de la famille des martres, grand à peu près comme un renard, mais plus bas de pattes, et à tête plate et obtuse, semi-aquatiques, qui vit au bord des rivières.

Where the eye mixes louée and loutre

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. louée runs 5 letters (CVVVV) against loutre's 6 (CVVCCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
louée
6 ch
loutre

Look-alike desk: louée vs loutre

A purely visual mix-up. louée (\lu.e\) and loutre (\lutʁ\) 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 57780, 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\. loutre is at rank #32,056, tagged as anoun, pronounced \lutʁ\.

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 57780, this pair ranks #113,016 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of louée vs loutre

Shared letters: elou. Private to "louée": é. Private to "loutre": rt.

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

Known mistypes of this pair

  • loutre ← lloutre · loture · lourte · louter · loutrre · louttre · luotre · olutre

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "louée" and "loutre" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (\lu.e\ versus \lutʁ\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "louée" vs "loutre" - which ranks higher?
"louée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #25,724 in our French list, against #32,056 for "loutre". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "louée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "loutre" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #113,016 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "louée" and "loutre" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "loutre vs lure". 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 #113,016 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