shipvsstripConfusable pair

Which to use

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

#23,693
“ship” frequency rank
#14,158
“strip” frequency rank
37851
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ship strip
Definition Couple principalement non officiel ou non canonique entre des personnages. Striptease.

Where the eye mixes ship and strip

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

4 ch
ship
5 ch
strip

Why the eye confuses ship with strip

A purely visual mix-up. ship (\ʃip\) and strip (\stʁip\) 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 37851, 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\. strip is at rank #14,158, tagged as anoun, pronounced \stʁip\.

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 37851, this pair ranks #259,520 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of ship vs strip

Shared letters: ips. Private to "ship": h. Private to "strip": rt.

"ship" · 4 letters · shape CCVC  ·  "strip" · 5 letters · shape CCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • shiphsip · shhip · shipp · shpi · sihp · sship
  • stripsrtip · sstrip · stirp · stripp · strpi · strrip · sttrip · tsrip

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "ship" and "strip" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (\ʃip\ versus \stʁip\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary French text, does "ship" or "strip" show up more?
"strip" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #14,158 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

Eye-level mix-up between "ship" and "strip" 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 "strip" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #259,520 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ship" and "strip" 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 #259,520 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