shipvsSPTell them apart

Which to use

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

#23,693
“ship” frequency rank
#11,860
“SP” frequency rank
35553
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ship SP
Definition Couple principalement non officiel ou non canonique entre des personnages. Syntagme prépositionnel.

Where the eye mixes ship and SP

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

4 ch
ship
2 ch
SP

Look-alike desk: ship vs SP

A purely visual mix-up. ship (\ʃip\) and SP (\ɛs.pe\) 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 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 35553, 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\. SP is at rank #11,860, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ɛs.pe\.

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 35553, this pair ranks #275,886 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of ship vs SP

Shared letters: ps. Private to "ship": hi. Private to "SP": -.

"ship" · 4 letters · shape CCVC  ·  "SP" · 2 letters · shape CC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • shiphsip · shhip · shipp · shpi · sihp · sship

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "ship" and "SP" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (\ʃip\ versus \ɛs.pe\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "ship" or "SP"?
"SP" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #11,860 in our French list, against #23,693 for "ship". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "ship" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "SP" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #275,886 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ship" and "SP" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Sepp vs ship". 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 #275,886 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