uréevsUzèsTell them apart

Quick tell: urée is a noun, Uzès is a name, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“urée” is a noun and “Uzès” is a name - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#48,849
“urée” frequency rank
#34,350
“Uzès” frequency rank
83199
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature urée Uzès
Definition Substance cristallisable, incolore, de formule chimique COH₄N₂, dont la présence caractérise l’urine de la plupart des animaux dont l’homme. Commune française, située dans le département du Gard.

Where the eye mixes urée and Uzès

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 1 letter in sequence. urée (VCVV) and Uzès (VCVC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

4 ch
urée
4 ch
Uzès

Look-alike desk: urée vs Uzès

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: urée is \y.ʁe\ while Uzès is \y.zɛs\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs name), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 83199, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

urée is recorded at frequency rank #48,849, classified as anoun, pronounced \y.ʁe\. Uzès is at rank #34,350, tagged as aname, pronounced \y.zɛs\.

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 83199, this pair ranks #15,266 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of urée vs Uzès

Shared letters: u. Private to "urée": eré. Private to "Uzès": szè.

"urée" · 4 letters · shape VCVV  ·  "Uzès" · 4 letters · shape VCVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "urée" for "Uzès" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "urée" is a noun and "Uzès" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "urée" or "Uzès" show up more?
"Uzès" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #34,350 in our French list, against #48,849 for "urée". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "urée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Uzès" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #15,266 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "urée" and "Uzès" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "urée vs urètre". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #15,266 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