saletévssaltoWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#19,678
“saleté” frequency rank
#39,999
“salto” frequency rank
59677
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature saleté salto
Definition État de ce qui est sale, malpropre. Saut périlleux : saut au cours duquel le corps réalise dans l'espace un tour complet autour de son axe horizontal.

Where the eye mixes saleté and salto

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

6 ch
saleté
5 ch
salto

Look-alike desk: saleté vs salto

A purely visual mix-up. saleté (\sal.te\) and salto (\sal.to\) 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 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 59677, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

saleté is recorded at frequency rank #19,678, classified as anoun, pronounced \sal.te\. salto is at rank #39,999, tagged as anoun, pronounced \sal.to\.

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 59677, this pair ranks #101,784 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of saleté vs salto

Shared letters: alst. Private to "saleté": . Private to "salto": o.

"saleté" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV  ·  "salto" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • saltoaslto · sallto · salot · saltto · satlo · slato · ssalto

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "saleté" for "salto" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\sal.te\ versus \sal.to\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "saleté" or "salto"?
"saleté" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #19,678 in our French list, against #39,999 for "salto". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "saleté" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "salto" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #101,784 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "saleté" and "salto" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "salto vs sart". 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 #101,784 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