solervssourWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#48,202
“soler” frequency rank
#35,736
“sour” frequency rank
83938
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature soler sour
Definition Nom donné dans l’Aisne à un cépage donnant du raisin noir, le peloursin. Égout.

Where the eye mixes soler and sour

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

5 ch
soler
4 ch
sour

Visual trap between soler and sour

A purely visual mix-up. soler (\sɔ.le\) and sour (\suʁ\) 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 83938, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

soler is recorded at frequency rank #48,202, classified as anoun, pronounced \sɔ.le\. sour is at rank #35,736, tagged as anoun, pronounced \suʁ\.

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 83938, this pair ranks #13,880 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of soler vs sour

Shared letters: ors. Private to "soler": el. Private to "sour": u.

"soler" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "sour" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • solerosler · sloer · soelr · solerr · soller · solre · ssoler
  • sourosur · soru · sourr · ssour · suor

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "soler" and "sour" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (\sɔ.le\ versus \suʁ\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "soler" or "sour"?
"sour" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #35,736 in our French list, against #48,202 for "soler". 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 "soler" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "sour" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #13,880 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "soler" and "sour" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "socles vs soler". 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 #13,880 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