shevssurConfusable pair

Quick tell: she is a pronoun, sur is a preposition, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“she” is a pronoun and “sur” is a preposition - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#16,015
“she” frequency rank
#26
“sur” frequency rank
16041
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature she sur
Definition Elle. Se réfère à une femme de la troisième personne du sujet. Indique une position plus élevée.

Where the eye mixes she and sur

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 1 letter in sequence.

3 ch
she
3 ch
sur

Visual trap between she and sur

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: she is \ʃi\ while sur is \syʁ\. 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 (pronoun vs preposition), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 16041, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

she is recorded at frequency rank #16,015, classified as apron, pronounced \ʃi\. sur is at rank #26, tagged as aprep, pronounced \syʁ\.

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 16041, this pair ranks #389,668 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of she vs sur

Shared letters: s. Private to "she": eh. Private to "sur": ru.

"she" · 3 letters · shape CCV  ·  "sur" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "she" and "sur" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "she" is a pronoun and "sur" a preposition, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "she" or "sur" show up more?
"sur" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #26 in our French list, against #16,015 for "she". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "she" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "sur" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #389,668 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "she" and "sur" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "she vs suu". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #389,668 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