vouervsvousWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: vouer is a verb, vous is a pronoun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“vouer” is a verb and “vous” is a pronoun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#43,728
“vouer” frequency rank
#37
“vous” frequency rank
43765
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature vouer vous
Definition Promettre par vœu. Pronom clitique ou tonique de la deuxième personne du pluriel sujet, lorsque l’interlocuteur s’adresse à plusieurs autres personnes.

Where the eye mixes vouer and vous

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

5 ch
vouer
4 ch
vous

Why the eye confuses vouer with vous

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: vouer is \vwe\ while vous is \vu\. 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 (verb vs pronoun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 43765, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

vouer is recorded at frequency rank #43,728, classified as averb, pronounced \vwe\. vous is at rank #37, tagged as apron, pronounced \vu\.

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 43765, this pair ranks #215,596 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of vouer vs vous

Shared letters: ouv. Private to "vouer": er. Private to "vous": s.

"vouer" · 5 letters · shape CVVVC  ·  "vous" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • vouer ← ovuer · voeur · vouerr · voure · vuoer · vvouer
  • vous ← ovus · vosu · vouss · vuos · vvous

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "vouer" and "vous" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "vouer" is a verb and "vous" a pronoun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "vouer" or "vous" show up more?
"vous" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #37 in our French list, against #43,728 for "vouer". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "vouer" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "vous" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #215,596 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "vouer" and "vous" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "vouer 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 #215,596 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