starsvssursTell them apart

Quick tell: stars is a noun, surs is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#3,876
“stars” frequency rank
#45,900
“surs” frequency rank
49776
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature stars surs
Definition Pluriel de star. Masculin pluriel de l’adjectif sur.

Where the eye mixes stars and surs

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. stars runs 5 letters (CCVCC) against surs's 4 (CVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
stars
4 ch
surs

Why the eye confuses stars with surs

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: stars is \staʁ\ while surs is \syʁ\. 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 (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 49776, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

stars is recorded at frequency rank #3,876, classified as anoun, pronounced \staʁ\. surs is at rank #45,900, tagged as anadj, pronounced \syʁ\.

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 49776, this pair ranks #167,932 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of stars vs surs

Shared letters: rs. Private to "stars": at. Private to "surs": u.

"stars" · 5 letters · shape CCVCC  ·  "surs" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • stars ← satrs · sstars · starrs · starss · stasr · stras · sttars · tsars
  • surs ← srus · ssurs · surrs · surss · susr

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "stars" and "surs" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "stars" is a noun and "surs" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "stars" or "surs" show up more?
"stars" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,876 in our French list, against #45,900 for "surs". 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 "stars" and "surs" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "stars" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "surs" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #167,932 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "stars" and "surs" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "surs 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 #167,932 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