soudurevssouffreWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: soudure is a noun, souffre is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“soudure” is a noun and “souffre” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#21,774
“soudure” frequency rank
#3,804
“souffre” frequency rank
25578
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature soudure souffre
Definition Action de souder ; le résultat de ce travail. Première personne du singulier de l’indicatif du verbe souffrir.

Where the eye mixes soudure and souffre

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. soudure (CVVCVCV) and souffre (CVVCCCV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

7 ch
soudure
7 ch
souffre

Why the eye confuses soudure with souffre

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: soudure is \su.dyʁ\ while souffre is \sufʁ\. 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 (noun vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 25578, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

soudure is recorded at frequency rank #21,774, classified as anoun, pronounced \su.dyʁ\. souffre is at rank #3,804, tagged as averb, pronounced \sufʁ\.

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 25578, this pair ranks #340,052 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of soudure vs souffre

Shared letters: eorsu. Private to "soudure": d. Private to "souffre": f.

"soudure" · 7 letters · shape CVVCVCV  ·  "souffre" · 7 letters · shape CVVCCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • soudureosudure · soduure · souddure · soudrue · souduer · soudurre · souudre · ssoudure
  • souffreosuffre · sofufre · souffer · souffrre · soufrfe · ssouffre · suoffre

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "soudure" and "souffre" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "soudure" is a noun and "souffre" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "soudure" or "souffre" show up more?
"souffre" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,804 in our French list, against #21,774 for "soudure". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "soudure" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "souffre" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #340,052 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "soudure" and "souffre" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "soudure vs soudures". 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 #340,052 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