ochvsouhWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: och is a conjunction, ouh is an intj, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“och” is a conjunction and “ouh” is an intj - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#49,829
“och” frequency rank
#19,618
“ouh” frequency rank
69447
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature och ouh
Definition Et. Cri de douleur. → voir ouille

Letter map: och vs ouh

Shared letters muted; letters that set och and ouh apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

3 ch
och
3 ch
ouh

Role in the sentence - och and ouh

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: och is aconjunction and ouhanintj. On the page they differ by a single letter - c in “och” becomes u in “ouh”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 69447, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

och is recorded at frequency rank #49,829, classified as aconj. ouh is at rank #19,618, tagged as anintj, pronounced \u\.

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 69447, this pair ranks #55,067 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of och vs ouh

Shared letters: ho. Private to "och": c. Private to "ouh": u.

"och" · 3 letters · shape VCC  ·  "ouh" · 3 letters · shape VVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "och" for "ouh" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "och" is a conjunction and "ouh" an intj, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "och" or "ouh"?
"ouh" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #19,618 in our French list, against #49,829 for "och". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "och" and "ouh".

  • Full dictionary entry for "och" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "ouh" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #55,067 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "och" and "ouh" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "och vs oim". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #55,067 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