seraitvsservisWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: serait is a verb, servis is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“serait” is a verb and “servis” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#228
“serait” frequency rank
#13,062
“servis” frequency rank
13290
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature serait servis
Definition Troisième personne du singulier du conditionnel présent de être. Masculin pluriel de servi.

Where the eye mixes serait and servis

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.

6 ch
serait
6 ch
servis

Why the eye confuses serait with servis

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: serait is \sə.ʁɛ\ while servis is \sɛʁ.vi\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 13290, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

serait is recorded at frequency rank #228, classified as averb, pronounced \sə.ʁɛ\. servis is at rank #13,062, tagged as anadj, pronounced \sɛʁ.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 13290, this pair ranks #401,623 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of serait vs servis

Shared letters: eirs. Private to "serait": at. Private to "servis": v.

"serait" · 6 letters · shape CVCVVC  ·  "servis" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • seraitesrait · searit · seraitt · serati · seriat · sreait · sserait
  • servisesrvis · serivs · serrvis · serviss · servsi · servvis · sevris · srevis

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "serait" for "servis" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "serait" is a verb and "servis" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "serait" or "servis" show up more?
"serait" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #228 in our French list, against #13,062 for "servis". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "serait" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "servis" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #401,623 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "serait" and "servis" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "servis vs servons". 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 #401,623 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