Which to use
“sans” is a preposition and “sun” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #80
- “sans” frequency rank
- #6,897
- “sun” frequency rank
- 6977
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | sans | sun |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Préposition marquant l’absence, le manque, l’exclusion d’une personne, d’une chose. — Note d’usage : On n’utilise généralement pas d’article indéfini ou partitif. Peut s’accentuer avec aucun. | Chanter |
Letter map: sans vs sun
Shared letters muted; letters that set sans and sun apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.
Part-of-speech tell for sans / sun
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: sans is apreposition and sunaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 6977, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
sans is recorded at frequency rank #80, classified as aprep, pronounced \sɑ̃\. sun is at rank #6,897, tagged as averb.
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 6977, this pair ranks #424,625 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of sans vs sun
Shared letters: ns. Private to "sans": a. Private to "sun": u.
"sans" · 4 letters · shape CVCC · "sun" · 3 letters · shape CVC
Known mistypes of this pair
- sans ← asns · sanns · sanss · sasn · snas · ssans
Frequently Asked Questions
Can "sans" and "sun" be used interchangeably?
Which is more common, "sans" or "sun"?
Useful next steps
Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "sans" and "sun".
- Full dictionary entry for "sans" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "sun" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #424,625 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "sans" and "sun" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "sun vs suu". 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 #424,625 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.