voltvsvoûtéTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#33,072
“volt” frequency rank
#45,952
“voûté” frequency rank
79024
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature volt voûté
Definition Unité de mesure de force électromotrice et de tension électrique du Système international, égale à la différence de potentiel entre deux points d’un conducteur transportant un courant d’un ampère quand la puissance dissipée entre ces deux points est d’un watt. Son symbole est V. Qui présente une voûte, qui est recourbé.

Where the eye mixes volt and voûté

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

4 ch
volt
5 ch
voûté

Visual trap between volt and voûté

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: volt is \vɔlt\ while voûté is \vu.te\. 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 79024, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

volt is recorded at frequency rank #33,072, classified as anoun, pronounced \vɔlt\. voûté is at rank #45,952, tagged as anadj, pronounced \vu.te\.

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 79024, this pair ranks #24,239 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of volt vs voûté

Shared letters: otv. Private to "volt": l. Private to "voûté": éû.

"volt" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "voûté" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • volt ← ovlt · vlot · vollt · voltt · votl · vvolt

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "volt" for "voûté" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "volt" is a noun and "voûté" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "volt" or "voûté" show up more?
"volt" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #33,072 in our French list, against #45,952 for "voûté". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "volt" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "voûté" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #24,239 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "volt" and "voûté" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "voûté vs voûtée". 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 #24,239 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