Which to use
“shop” is a noun and “son” is a determiner - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #13,063
- “shop” frequency rank
- #42
- “son” frequency rank
- 13105
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | shop | son |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Atelier, espace de travail, endroit où on fabrique quelque chose. | Troisième personne du sujet, objet masculin singulier. |
Where the eye mixes shop and son
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.
Visual trap between shop and son
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: shop is \ʃɔp\ while son is \sɔ̃\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs determiner), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 13105, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
shop is recorded at frequency rank #13,063, classified as anoun, pronounced \ʃɔp\. son is at rank #42, tagged as adet, pronounced \sɔ̃\.
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 13105, this pair ranks #402,411 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of shop vs son
Shared letters: os. Private to "shop": hp. Private to "son": n.
"shop" · 4 letters · shape CCVC · "son" · 3 letters · shape CVC
Known mistypes of this pair
- shop ← hsop · shhop · shopp · shpo · sohp · sshop
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "shop" for "son" ever safe?
In ordinary French text, does "shop" or "son" show up more?
Useful next steps
Eye-level mix-up between "shop" and "son" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "shop" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "son" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #402,411 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "shop" and "son" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Sepp vs shop". 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 #402,411 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.