Which to use
“soufflé” is an adjective and “souffler” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #14,800
- “soufflé” frequency rank
- #11,667
- “souffler” frequency rank
- 26467
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | soufflé | souffler |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Qui est exagéré, surestimé. | Pousser de l’air hors de la bouche. |
Same sound, different letters: soufflé vs souffler
Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 6 letters.
Homophone desk: soufflé vs souffler
Say them out loud and nothing separates them: soufflé and souffler carry the same recorded pronunciation, \su.fle\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is anadjective, the other averb, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 26467, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
soufflé is recorded at frequency rank #14,800, classified as anadj, pronounced \su.fle\. souffler is at rank #11,667, tagged as averb, pronounced \su.fle\.
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 26467, this pair ranks #334,819 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of soufflé vs souffler
Shared letters: flosu. Private to "soufflé": é. Private to "souffler": er.
"soufflé" · 7 letters · shape CVVCCCV · "souffler" · 8 letters · shape CVVCCCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
- souffler ← osuffler · sofufler · souffelr · soufflerr · souffller · soufflre · soufler · souflfer
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "soufflé" for "souffler" ever safe?
In ordinary French text, does "soufflé" or "souffler" show up more?
After this comparison
"soufflé" and "souffler" share a sound, keep the gloss open, then jump to the headword or a nearby trap.
- Full dictionary entry for "soufflé" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "souffler" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #334,819 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "soufflé" and "souffler" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "souffler vs soufflerie". 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 #334,819 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.