soulagévssoutaneWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#16,485
“soulagé” frequency rank
#45,880
“soutane” frequency rank
62365
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature soulagé soutane
Definition Participe passé masculin singulier de soulager. Vêtement boutonné du haut en bas et tombant jusqu’aux pieds, que portent notamment les ecclésiastiques.

Where the eye mixes soulagé and soutane

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. soulagé and soutane follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVVCVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

7 ch
soulagé
7 ch
soutane

Why the eye confuses soulagé with soutane

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: soulagé is \su.la.ʒe\ while soutane is \su.tan\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 62365, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

soulagé is recorded at frequency rank #16,485, classified as averb, pronounced \su.la.ʒe\. soutane is at rank #45,880, tagged as anoun, pronounced \su.tan\.

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 62365, this pair ranks #87,508 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of soulagé vs soutane

Shared letters: aosu. Private to "soulagé": glé. Private to "soutane": ent.

"soulagé" · 7 letters · shape CVVCVCV  ·  "soutane" · 7 letters · shape CVVCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • soutane ← osutane · sotuane · souatne · soutaen · soutanne · soutnae · souttane · ssoutane

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "soulagé" for "soutane" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "soulagé" is a verb and "soutane" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "soulagé" or "soutane"?
"soulagé" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #16,485 in our French list, against #45,880 for "soutane". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Eye-level mix-up between "soulagé" and "soutane" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "soulagé" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "soutane" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #87,508 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "soulagé" and "soutane" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "souabe vs soutane". 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 #87,508 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