sonvssudWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: son is a determiner, sud is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“son” is a determiner and “sud” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#42
“son” frequency rank
#439
“sud” frequency rank
481
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature son sud
Definition Troisième personne du sujet, objet masculin singulier. Point cardinal opposé au nord ; direction du pôle de l’hémisphère austral et correspondant à l’azimut 180°.

Where the eye mixes son and sud

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 1 letter in sequence.

3 ch
son
3 ch
sud

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: son is \sɔ̃\ while sud is \syd\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (determiner vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 481, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

son is recorded at frequency rank #42, classified as adet, pronounced \sɔ̃\. sud is at rank #439, tagged as anoun, pronounced \syd\.

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 481, this pair ranks #439,571 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of son vs sud

Shared letters: s. Private to "son": no. Private to "sud": du.

"son" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "sud" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "son" and "sud" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "son" is a determiner and "sud" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "son" or "sud"?
"son" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #42 in our French list, against #439 for "sud". 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 "son" and "sud". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "son" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "sud" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #439,571 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "son" and "sud" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "sud vs suu". Nearby pair

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