ricevsrouéTell them apart

Quick tell: rice is a verb, roué is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#19,657
“rice” frequency rank
#46,421
“roué” frequency rank
66078
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature rice roué
Definition Première personne du singulier du présent du subjonctif de rizar. Qualifie le bois du cerf, lorsqu’il est serré et peu ouvert.

Where the eye mixes rice and roué

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 1 letter in sequence. rice (CVCV) and roué (CVVV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

4 ch
rice
4 ch
roué

Why the eye confuses rice with roué

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: rice is \ˈri.θe\ while roué is \ʁwe\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 66078, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

rice is recorded at frequency rank #19,657, classified as averb, pronounced \ˈri.θe\. roué is at rank #46,421, tagged as anadj, pronounced \ʁwe\.

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 66078, this pair ranks #69,426 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of rice vs roué

Shared letters: r. Private to "rice": cei. Private to "roué": oué.

"rice" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "roué" · 4 letters · shape CVVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • rice ← irce · ricce · riec · rrice

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "rice" and "roué" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "rice" is a verb and "roué" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "rice" or "roué" show up more?
"rice" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #19,657 in our French list, against #46,421 for "roué". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "rice" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "roué" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #69,426 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "rice" and "roué" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "roué vs roya". 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 #69,426 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