ruvsrushWhat's the difference?

Which to use

“ru” and “rush” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#16,467
“ru” frequency rank
#12,245
“rush” frequency rank
28712
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ru rush
Definition Petit ruisseau. Attaque soudaine.

Where the eye mixes ru and rush

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

2 ch
ru
4 ch
rush

Visual trap between ru and rush

A purely visual mix-up. ru (\ʁy\) and rush (\ʁœʃ\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “ru” sits inside “rush”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 28712, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ru is recorded at frequency rank #16,467, classified as anoun, pronounced \ʁy\. rush is at rank #12,245, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ʁœʃ\.

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 28712, this pair ranks #321,155 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of ru vs rush

Shared letters: ru. Private to "ru": -. Private to "rush": hs.

"ru" · 2 letters · shape CV  ·  "rush" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • rushrrush · rsuh · ruhs · rushh · russh · ursh

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "ru" for "rush" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\ʁy\ versus \ʁœʃ\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary French text, does "ru" or "rush" show up more?
"rush" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #12,245 in our French list, against #16,467 for "ru". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "ru" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "rush" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #321,155 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ru" and "rush" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "rog vs ru". 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 #321,155 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