Which to use
“sous” is a preposition and “sun” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #115
- “sous” frequency rank
- #6,897
- “sun” frequency rank
- 7012
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | sous | sun |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Sert à marquer la situation d’une chose à l’égard d’une autre qui est au-dessus, par-dessus, qui la couvre en totalité ou en partie. | Chanter |
Letter map: sous vs sun
Shared letters muted; letters that set sous and sun apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.
Role in the sentence - sous and sun
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: sous is apreposition and sunaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 7012, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
sous is recorded at frequency rank #115, classified as aprep, pronounced \su\. sun is at rank #6,897, tagged as averb.
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 7012, this pair ranks #424,544 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of sous vs sun
Shared letters: su. Private to "sous": o. Private to "sun": n.
"sous" · 4 letters · shape CVVC · "sun" · 3 letters · shape CVC
Known mistypes of this pair
- sous ← osus · sosu · souss · ssous · suos
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "sous" and "sun" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Which is more common, "sous" or "sun"?
What to do next
Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "sous" and "sun".
- Full dictionary entry for "sous" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "sun" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #424,544 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "sous" and "sun" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "sun vs suu". 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 #424,544 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.