sourdesvssourisWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: sourdes is a adjective, souris is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“sourdes” is an adjective and “souris” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#42,062
“sourdes” frequency rank
#2,965
“souris” frequency rank
45027
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature sourdes souris
Definition Féminin pluriel de sourd. Petit rongeur de la famille des muridés.

Where the eye mixes sourdes and souris

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. sourdes runs 7 letters (CVVCCVC) against souris's 6 (CVVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

7 ch
sourdes
6 ch
souris

Look-alike desk: sourdes vs souris

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: sourdes is \suʁd\ while souris is \su.ʁi\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 45027, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

sourdes is recorded at frequency rank #42,062, classified as anadj, pronounced \suʁd\. souris is at rank #2,965, tagged as anoun, pronounced \su.ʁi\.

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 45027, this pair ranks #205,949 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of sourdes vs souris

Shared letters: orsu. Private to "sourdes": de. Private to "souris": i.

"sourdes" · 7 letters · shape CVVCCVC  ·  "souris" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • sourdesosurdes · sorudes · soudres · sourddes · sourdess · sourdse · soureds · sourrdes
  • sourisosuris · soruis · souirs · souriss · sourris · soursi · ssouris · suoris

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "sourdes" and "souris" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "sourdes" is an adjective and "souris" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "sourdes" or "souris" show up more?
"souris" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,965 in our French list, against #42,062 for "sourdes". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "sourdes" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "souris" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #205,949 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "sourdes" and "souris" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "sofres vs sourdes". 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 #205,949 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