soirvssolidConfusable pair

Quick tell: soir is a noun, solid is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“soir” is a noun and “solid” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#268
“soir” frequency rank
#33,471
“solid” frequency rank
33739
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature soir solid
Definition Déclin du jour, dernières heures de la journée. Solide.

Where the eye mixes soir and solid

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

4 ch
soir
5 ch
solid

Look-alike desk: soir vs solid

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: soir is \swaʁ\ while solid is \zoˈliːt\. 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 adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 33739, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

soir is recorded at frequency rank #268, classified as anoun, pronounced \swaʁ\. solid is at rank #33,471, tagged as anadj, pronounced \zoˈliːt\.

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 33739, this pair ranks #288,602 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of soir vs solid

Shared letters: ios. Private to "soir": r. Private to "solid": dl.

"soir" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "solid" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • soirosir · sior · soirr · sori · ssoir
  • solidoslid · sloid · soild · soldi · solidd · sollid · ssolid

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "soir" for "solid" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "soir" is a noun and "solid" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "soir" or "solid" show up more?
"soir" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #268 in our French list, against #33,471 for "solid". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

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 "soir" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "solid" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #288,602 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "soir" and "solid" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "soli vs solid". 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 #288,602 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