ouahvsoursTell them apart

Quick tell: ouah is a intj, ours is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“ouah” is an intj and “ours” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#11,265
“ouah” frequency rank
#4,358
“ours” frequency rank
15623
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ouah ours
Definition Exprime la surprise, le contentement, l'admiration. Plantigrade, carnassier ou omnivore, à fourrure épaisse, de la famille des ursidés.

Where the eye mixes ouah and ours

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

4 ch
ouah
4 ch
ours

Why the eye confuses ouah with ours

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: ouah is \wa\ while ours is \uʁs\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (intj vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 15623, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ouah is recorded at frequency rank #11,265, classified as anintj, pronounced \wa\. ours is at rank #4,358, tagged as anoun, pronounced \uʁs\.

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 15623, this pair ranks #391,570 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of ouah vs ours

Shared letters: ou. Private to "ouah": ah. Private to "ours": rs.

"ouah" · 4 letters · shape VVVC  ·  "ours" · 4 letters · shape VVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • ouahoauh · ouahh · ouha · uoah
  • oursorus · ourrs · ourss · ousr · uors

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "ouah" and "ours" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "ouah" is an intj and "ours" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "ouah" or "ours" show up more?
"ours" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #4,358 in our French list, against #11,265 for "ouah". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "ouah" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "ours" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #391,570 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ouah" and "ours" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "och vs ouah". 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 #391,570 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