recourtvsretourWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: recourt is a verb, retour is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“recourt” is a verb and “retour” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#33,431
“recourt” frequency rank
#403
“retour” frequency rank
33834
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature recourt retour
Definition Troisième personne du singulier de l’indicatif présent de recourir. Tour en sens contraire.

Where the eye mixes recourt and retour

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. recourt runs 7 letters (CVCVVCC) against retour's 6 (CVCVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

7 ch
recourt
6 ch
retour

Why the eye confuses recourt with retour

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: recourt is \ʁə.kuʁ\ while retour is \ʁə.tuʁ\. 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 (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 33834, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

recourt is recorded at frequency rank #33,431, classified as averb, pronounced \ʁə.kuʁ\. retour is at rank #403, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ʁə.tuʁ\.

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 33834, this pair ranks #287,972 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of recourt vs retour

Shared letters: eortu. Private to "recourt": c. Private to "retour": -.

"recourt" · 7 letters · shape CVCVVCC  ·  "retour" · 6 letters · shape CVCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • recourt ← ercourt · rceourt · reccourt · recorut · recourrt · recourtt · recoutr · recuort
  • retour ← ertour · reotur · retoru · retourr · rettour · retuor · rretour · rteour

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "recourt" and "retour" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "recourt" is a verb and "retour" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "recourt" vs "retour" - which ranks higher?
"retour" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #403 in our French list, against #33,431 for "recourt". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "recourt" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "retour" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #287,972 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "recourt" and "retour" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "recourt vs recouvré". 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 #287,972 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