sontvsSoultWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: sont is a verb, Soult is a name, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“sont” is a verb and “Soult” is a name - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#47
“sont” frequency rank
#48,803
“Soult” frequency rank
48850
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature sont Soult
Definition Troisième personne du pluriel de l’indicatif présent de être. Nom de famille.

Letter map: sont vs Soult

Shared letters muted; letters that set sont and Soult apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

4 ch
sont
5 ch
Soult

Part-of-speech tell for sont / Soult

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: sont is averb and Soultaname. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 48850, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

sont is recorded at frequency rank #47, classified as averb, pronounced \sɔ̃\. Soult is at rank #48,803, tagged as aname.

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 48850, this pair ranks #175,553 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of sont vs Soult

Shared letters: ost. Private to "sont": n. Private to "Soult": lu.

"sont" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "Soult" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • sontosnt · snot · sonnt · sontt · sotn · ssont
  • Soultosult · solut · soullt · soultt · soutl · ssoult · suolt

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "sont" for "Soult" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "sont" is a verb and "Soult" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "sont" vs "Soult" - which ranks higher?
"sont" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #47 in our French list, against #48,803 for "Soult". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "sont" and "Soult".

  • Full dictionary entry for "sont" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Soult" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #175,553 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "sont" and "Soult" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "skull vs Soult". 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 #175,553 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