SelimvsséviTell them apart

Quick tell: Selim is a name, sévi is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“Selim” is a name and “sévi” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#48,200
“Selim” frequency rank
#42,643
“sévi” frequency rank
90843
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Selim sévi
Definition Prénom masculin. Participe passé masculin singulier de sévir.

Letter map: Selim vs sévi

Shared letters muted; letters that set Selim and sévi apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. Selim runs 5 letters (CVCVC) against sévi's 4 (CVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
Selim
4 ch
sévi

Part-of-speech tell for Selim / sévi

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: Selim is aname and séviaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 90843, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Selim is recorded at frequency rank #48,200, classified as aname. sévi is at rank #42,643, tagged as averb, pronounced \se.vi\.

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 90843, this pair ranks #4,417 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of Selim vs sévi

Shared letters: is. Private to "Selim": elm. Private to "sévi": vé.

"Selim" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "sévi" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Selim ← eslim · seilm · selimm · sellim · selmi · sleim · sselim

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "Selim" and "sévi" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Selim" is a name and "sévi" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "Selim" or "sévi"?
"sévi" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #42,643 in our French list, against #48,200 for "Selim". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "Selim" and "sévi". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "Selim" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "sévi" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #4,417 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Selim" and "sévi" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Selim vs seum". 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 #4,417 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