roevsrouxWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: roe is a noun, roux is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“roe” is a noun and “roux” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#47,003
“roe” frequency rank
#5,076
“roux” frequency rank
52079
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature roe roux
Definition Roue. D’une couleur proche de l’orange, souvent en parlant des cheveux. #AD4F09

Letter map: roe vs roux

Shared letters muted; letters that set roe and roux apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

3 ch
roe
4 ch
roux

Part-of-speech tell for roe / roux

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: roe is anoun and rouxanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 52079, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

roe is recorded at frequency rank #47,003, classified as anoun. roux is at rank #5,076, tagged as anadj, pronounced \ʁu\.

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 52079, this pair ranks #150,329 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of roe vs roux

Shared letters: or. Private to "roe": e. Private to "roux": ux.

"roe" · 3 letters · shape CVV  ·  "roux" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • rouxorux · rouxx · roxu · rroux · ruox

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "roe" and "roux" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "roe" is a noun and "roux" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "roe" vs "roux" - which ranks higher?
"roux" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #5,076 in our French list, against #47,003 for "roe". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

You've compared "roe" and "roux". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "roe" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "roux" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #150,329 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "roe" and "roux" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "roe 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 #150,329 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