Which to use
“touché” and “tough” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #2,601
- “touché” frequency rank
- #44,229
- “tough” frequency rank
- 46830
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | touché | tough |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Ému par quelque chose. | Fort, résistant. |
Where the eye mixes touché and tough
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. touché runs 6 letters (CVVCCV) against tough's 5 (CVVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Look-alike desk: touché vs tough
A purely visual mix-up. touché (\tu.ʃe\) and tough (\tɔf\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 46830, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
touché is recorded at frequency rank #2,601, classified as anadj, pronounced \tu.ʃe\. tough is at rank #44,229, tagged as anadj, pronounced \tɔf\.
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 46830, this pair ranks #191,737 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of touché vs tough
Shared letters: hotu. Private to "touché": cé. Private to "tough": g.
"touché" · 6 letters · shape CVVCCV · "tough" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC
Known mistypes of this pair
- tough ← otugh · toguh · touggh · toughh · touhg · ttough · tuogh
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "touché" and "tough" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Which is more common, "touché" or "tough"?
What to do next
Eye-level mix-up between "touché" and "tough" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "touché" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "tough" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #191,737 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "touché" and "tough" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "thug vs tough". 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 #191,737 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.