Which to use
“soufflet” is a noun and “souffres” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #34,757
- “soufflet” frequency rank
- #35,287
- “souffres” frequency rank
- 70044
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | soufflet | souffres |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Instrument servant à souffler, à faire du vent. | Deuxième personne du singulier de l’indicatif présent du verbe souffrir. |
Where the eye mixes soufflet and souffres
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 6 letters in sequence. soufflet and souffres follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVVCCCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Visual trap between soufflet and souffres
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: soufflet is \su.flɛ\ while souffres 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 70044, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
soufflet is recorded at frequency rank #34,757, classified as anoun, pronounced \su.flɛ\. souffres is at rank #35,287, 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 70044, this pair ranks #52,857 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of soufflet vs souffres
Shared letters: efosu. Private to "soufflet": lt. Private to "souffres": r.
"soufflet" · 8 letters · shape CVVCCCVC · "souffres" · 8 letters · shape CVVCCCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "soufflet" and "souffres" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Which is more common, "soufflet" or "souffres"?
After this comparison
Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.
- Full dictionary entry for "soufflet" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "souffres" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #52,857 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "soufflet" and "souffres" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "sofres vs souffres". 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 #52,857 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.