nocevsnouéeTell them apart

Quick tell: noce is a noun, nouée is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#25,752
“noce” frequency rank
#41,930
“nouée” frequency rank
67682
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature noce nouée
Definition Mariage. Féminin singulier de noué.

Where the eye mixes noce and nouée

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. noce runs 4 letters (CVCV) against nouée's 5 (CVVVV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
noce
5 ch
nouée

Look-alike desk: noce vs nouée

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: noce is \nɔs\ while nouée is \nwe\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 67682, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

noce is recorded at frequency rank #25,752, classified as anoun, pronounced \nɔs\. nouée is at rank #41,930, tagged as anadj, pronounced \nwe\.

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 67682, this pair ranks #62,344 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of noce vs nouée

Shared letters: eno. Private to "noce": c. Private to "nouée": ué.

"noce" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "nouée" · 5 letters · shape CVVVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • noce ← ncoe · nnoce · nocce · noec

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "noce" and "nouée" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "noce" is a noun and "nouée" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "noce" or "nouée" show up more?
"noce" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #25,752 in our French list, against #41,930 for "nouée". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "noce" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "nouée" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #62,344 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "noce" and "nouée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "nouée 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 #62,344 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