sendvssondeTell them apart

Which to use

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

#36,156
“send” frequency rank
#7,902
“sonde” frequency rank
44058
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature send sonde
Definition Chose, objet. Instrument qui sert à sonder. — Il se dit particulièrement d’un plomb attaché à une corde et dont on use pour connaître la profondeur de la mer, d’une rivière, la nature du fond, etc.

Where the eye mixes send and sonde

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. send runs 4 letters (CVCC) against sonde's 5 (CVCCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
send
5 ch
sonde

Why the eye confuses send with sonde

A purely visual mix-up. send (\ˈsend\) and sonde (\sɔ̃d\) 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 44058, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

send is recorded at frequency rank #36,156, classified as anoun, pronounced \ˈsend\. sonde is at rank #7,902, tagged as anoun, pronounced \sɔ̃d\.

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 44058, this pair ranks #213,369 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of send vs sonde

Shared letters: dens. Private to "send": -. Private to "sonde": o.

"send" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "sonde" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • send ← esnd · sedn · sendd · sennd · sned · ssend
  • sonde ← osnde · snode · sodne · sondde · soned · sonnde · ssonde

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "send" for "sonde" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\ˈsend\ versus \sɔ̃d\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "send" or "sonde"?
"sonde" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #7,902 in our French list, against #36,156 for "send". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Eye-level mix-up between "send" and "sonde" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "send" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "sonde" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #213,369 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "send" and "sonde" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "send vs Sepp". 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 #213,369 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