Which to use
“shan” is a noun and “shut” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #36,590
- “shan” frequency rank
- #41,005
- “shut” frequency rank
- 77595
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | shan | shut |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Langue de la famille tai-kadai parlée en Birmanie, en Chine et en Thaïlande par les Shans. | Refermer, fermer ce qui était ouvert, fermer. |
Letter map: shan vs shut
Shared letters muted; letters that set shan and shut apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. shan and shut follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Part-of-speech tell for shan / shut
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: shan is anoun and shutaverb. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 77595, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
shan is recorded at frequency rank #36,590, classified as anoun, pronounced \ʃan\. shut is at rank #41,005, 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 77595, this pair ranks #27,911 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of shan vs shut
Shared letters: hs. Private to "shan": an. Private to "shut": tu.
"shan" · 4 letters · shape CCVC · "shut" · 4 letters · shape CCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "shan" and "shut" mean the same thing in a sentence?
In ordinary French text, does "shan" or "shut" show up more?
Useful next steps
Pair "shan" vs "shut" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.
- Full dictionary entry for "shan" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "shut" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #27,911 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "shan" and "shut" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "shut 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 #27,911 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.