servssuWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: ser is a pronoun, su is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“ser” is a pronoun and “su” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#15,252
“ser” frequency rank
#1,609
“su” frequency rank
16861
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ser su
Definition Que. Participe passé masculin singulier du verbe savoir.

Letter map: ser vs su

Shared letters muted; letters that set ser and su apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

3 ch
ser
2 ch
su

Part-of-speech tell for ser / su

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: ser is apronoun and suaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 16861, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ser is recorded at frequency rank #15,252, classified as apron. su is at rank #1,609, tagged as averb, pronounced \sy\.

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 16861, this pair ranks #385,920 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of ser vs su

Shared letters: s. Private to "ser": er. Private to "su": u.

"ser" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "su" · 2 letters · shape CV

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "ser" and "su" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "ser" is a pronoun and "su" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "ser" or "su" show up more?
"su" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,609 in our French list, against #15,252 for "ser". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "ser" and "su".

  • Full dictionary entry for "ser" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "su" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #385,920 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ser" and "su" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ser vs suu". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #385,920 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