tourtevstoutsWhat's the difference?

Which to use

“tourte” and “touts” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#46,497
“tourte” frequency rank
#29,573
“touts” frequency rank
76070
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature tourte touts
Definition Pâtisserie généralement salée contenant des viandes, des quenelles, etc. Pluriel de tout.

Where the eye mixes tourte and touts

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. tourte runs 6 letters (CVVCCV) against touts's 5 (CVVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
tourte
5 ch
touts

Why the eye confuses tourte with touts

A purely visual mix-up. tourte (\tuʁt\) and touts (\tu\) 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 76070, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

tourte is recorded at frequency rank #46,497, classified as anoun, pronounced \tuʁt\. touts is at rank #29,573, tagged as anoun, pronounced \tu\.

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 76070, this pair ranks #32,174 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of tourte vs touts

Shared letters: otu. Private to "tourte": er. Private to "touts": s.

"tourte" · 6 letters · shape CVVCCV  ·  "touts" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • tourte ← oturte · touret · tourrte · tourtte · toutre · ttourte · tuorte
  • touts ← otuts · totus · toust · toutss · toutts · ttouts

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "tourte" and "touts" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (\tuʁt\ versus \tu\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary French text, does "tourte" or "touts" show up more?
"touts" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #29,573 in our French list, against #46,497 for "tourte". 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 "tourte" and "touts" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "tourte" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "touts" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #32,174 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "tourte" and "touts" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "tourette vs tourte". 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 #32,174 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