outréevsouvreWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: outrée is a adjective, ouvre is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“outrée” is an adjective and “ouvre” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#39,919
“outrée” frequency rank
#1,369
“ouvre” frequency rank
41288
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature outrée ouvre
Definition Féminin singulier de outré. Première personne du singulier de l’indicatif présent de ouvrir.

Where the eye mixes outrée and ouvre

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

6 ch
outrée
5 ch
ouvre

Look-alike desk: outrée vs ouvre

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: outrée is \ut.ʁe\ while ouvre is \uvʁ\. 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 (adjective vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 41288, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

outrée is recorded at frequency rank #39,919, classified as anadj, pronounced \ut.ʁe\. ouvre is at rank #1,369, tagged as averb, pronounced \uvʁ\.

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 41288, this pair ranks #234,219 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of outrée vs ouvre

Shared letters: eoru. Private to "outrée": té. Private to "ouvre": v.

"outrée" · 6 letters · shape VVCCVV  ·  "ouvre" · 5 letters · shape VVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • ouvre ← ourve · ouver · ouvrre · ouvvre · ovure · uovre

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "outrée" for "ouvre" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "outrée" is an adjective and "ouvre" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "outrée" or "ouvre" show up more?
"ouvre" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,369 in our French list, against #39,919 for "outrée". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "outrée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "ouvre" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #234,219 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "outrée" and "ouvre" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "outrée vs outrés". 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 #234,219 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