ticevstocTell them apart

Quick tell: tice is a preposition, toc is an onomatopoeia, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“tice” is a preposition and “toc” is an onomatopoeia - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#45,913
“tice” frequency rank
#12,684
“toc” frequency rank
58597
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature tice toc
Definition En haut de, au sommet de (sans mouvement). Onomatopée servant à exprimer un bruit sec, un choc.

Where the eye mixes tice and toc

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

4 ch
tice
3 ch
toc

Visual trap between tice and toc

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: tice is \ˈtiʃɛ\ while toc is \tɔk\. 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 (preposition vs onomatopoeia), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 58597, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

tice is recorded at frequency rank #45,913, classified as aprep, pronounced \ˈtiʃɛ\. toc is at rank #12,684, tagged as anonomatopoeia, pronounced \tɔk\.

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 58597, this pair ranks #108,129 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of tice vs toc

Shared letters: ct. Private to "tice": ei. Private to "toc": o.

"tice" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "toc" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • ticeitce · tcie · ticce · tiec · ttice

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "tice" for "toc" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "tice" is a preposition and "toc" an onomatopoeia, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "tice" or "toc" show up more?
"toc" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #12,684 in our French list, against #45,913 for "tice". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "tice" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "toc" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #108,129 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "tice" and "toc" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "tice vs tif". 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 #108,129 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