soirvssoxWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#268
“soir” frequency rank
#23,694
“sox” frequency rank
23962
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature soir sox
Definition Déclin du jour, dernières heures de la journée. Pluriel de sock.

Where the eye mixes soir and sox

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

4 ch
soir
3 ch
sox

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

A purely visual mix-up. soir (\swaʁ\) and sox (\ˈsɑks\) 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 23962, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

soir is recorded at frequency rank #268, classified as anoun, pronounced \swaʁ\. sox is at rank #23,694, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ˈsɑks\.

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 23962, this pair ranks #349,456 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of soir vs sox

Shared letters: os. Private to "soir": ir. Private to "sox": x.

"soir" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "sox" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • soirosir · sior · soirr · sori · ssoir

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "soir" and "sox" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (\swaʁ\ versus \ˈsɑks\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "soir" or "sox"?
"soir" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #268 in our French list, against #23,694 for "sox". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

You've compared "soir" and "sox". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "soir" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "sox" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #349,456 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "soir" and "sox" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "sox 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

PlainSpell is a reference corpus, not spelling advice. Verify unusual forms in context.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list