Which to use
“soufflé” is an adjective and “souffre” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #14,800
- “soufflé” frequency rank
- #3,804
- “souffre” frequency rank
- 18604
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | soufflé | souffre |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Qui est exagéré, surestimé. | Première personne du singulier de l’indicatif du verbe souffrir. |
Where the eye mixes soufflé and souffre
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. soufflé and souffre follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVVCCCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Look-alike desk: soufflé vs souffre
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: soufflé is \su.fle\ 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 (adjective vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 18604, 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\. 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 18604, this pair ranks #377,468 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of soufflé vs souffre
Shared letters: fosu. Private to "soufflé": lé. Private to "souffre": er.
"soufflé" · 7 letters · shape CVVCCCV · "souffre" · 7 letters · shape CVVCCCV
Known mistypes of this pair
- souffre ← osuffre · sofufre · souffer · souffrre · soufrfe · ssouffre · suoffre
Frequently Asked Questions
Can "soufflé" and "souffre" be used interchangeably?
Which is more common, "soufflé" or "souffre"?
After this comparison
Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.
- Full dictionary entry for "soufflé" 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 #377,468 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "soufflé" and "souffre" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "soufflé vs soufflent". 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 #377,468 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.