neuevsnoueWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: neue is a adjective, noue is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“neue” is an adjective and “noue” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#44,599
“neue” frequency rank
#26,457
“noue” frequency rank
71056
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature neue noue
Definition Accusatif pluriel (à tous les genres) de la déclinaison forte de neu. Endroit où se rencontrent les surfaces inclinées de deux combles.

Where the eye mixes neue and noue

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. neue and noue follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVVV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

4 ch
neue
4 ch
noue

Visual trap between neue and noue

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: neue is \ˈnɔɪ̯ə\ while noue is \nu\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by a single letter - e in “neue” becomes o in “noue”, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 71056, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

neue is recorded at frequency rank #44,599, classified as anadj, pronounced \ˈnɔɪ̯ə\. noue is at rank #26,457, tagged as anoun, pronounced \nu\.

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 71056, this pair ranks #48,965 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of neue vs noue

Shared letters: enu. Private to "neue": -. Private to "noue": o.

"neue" · 4 letters · shape CVVV  ·  "noue" · 4 letters · shape CVVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • neue ← enue · neeu · nneue
  • noue ← nnoue · noeu · nuoe · onue

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "neue" for "noue" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "neue" is an adjective and "noue" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "neue" vs "noue" - which ranks higher?
"noue" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #26,457 in our French list, against #44,599 for "neue". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "neue" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "noue" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #48,965 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "neue" and "noue" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "neue vs noués". 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 #48,965 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