shipvsslipsTell them apart

Which to use

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

#23,693
“ship” frequency rank
#35,279
“slips” frequency rank
58972
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ship slips
Definition Couple principalement non officiel ou non canonique entre des personnages. Pluriel de slip.

Where the eye mixes ship and slips

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

4 ch
ship
5 ch
slips

Look-alike desk: ship vs slips

A purely visual mix-up. ship (\ʃip\) and slips (\slip\) 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 58972, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ship is recorded at frequency rank #23,693, classified as anoun, pronounced \ʃip\. slips is at rank #35,279, tagged as anoun, pronounced \slip\.

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 58972, this pair ranks #105,836 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of ship vs slips

Shared letters: ips. Private to "ship": h. Private to "slips": l.

"ship" · 4 letters · shape CCVC  ·  "slips" · 5 letters · shape CCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • shiphsip · shhip · shipp · shpi · sihp · sship
  • slipslsips · silps · slipps · slipss · slisp · sllips · slpis · sslips

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "ship" and "slips" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (\ʃip\ versus \slip\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "ship" or "slips"?
"ship" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #23,693 in our French list, against #35,279 for "slips". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "ship" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "slips" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #105,836 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ship" and "slips" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "shops vs slips". 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 #105,836 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