shipvssuieWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#23,693
“ship” frequency rank
#38,549
“suie” frequency rank
62242
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ship suie
Definition Couple principalement non officiel ou non canonique entre des personnages. Matière noire et épaisse que la fumée dépose sur la surface des corps avec lesquels elle entre en contact.

Where the eye mixes ship and suie

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

4 ch
ship
4 ch
suie

Visual trap between ship and suie

A purely visual mix-up. ship (\ʃip\) and suie (\sɥi\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 62242, 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\. suie is at rank #38,549, tagged as anoun, pronounced \sɥi\.

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 62242, this pair ranks #88,118 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of ship vs suie

Shared letters: is. Private to "ship": hp. Private to "suie": eu.

"ship" · 4 letters · shape CCVC  ·  "suie" · 4 letters · shape CVVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • shiphsip · shhip · shipp · shpi · sihp · sship
  • suiesiue · ssuie · suei · usie

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "ship" for "suie" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\ʃip\ versus \sɥi\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "ship" or "suie"?
"ship" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #23,693 in our French list, against #38,549 for "suie". 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 "suie" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #88,118 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ship" and "suie" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "suie 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 #88,118 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