vouivsvoûtéWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#45,950
“voui” frequency rank
#45,952
“voûté” frequency rank
91902
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature voui voûté
Definition Oui. Qui présente une voûte, qui est recourbé.

Where the eye mixes voui and voûté

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence. voui runs 4 letters (CVVV) against voûté's 5 (CVVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
voui
5 ch
voûté

Why the eye confuses voui with voûté

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: voui is \vwi\ 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 (adverb vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 91902, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

voui is recorded at frequency rank #45,950, classified as anadv, pronounced \vwi\. 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 91902, this pair ranks #3,430 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of voui vs voûté

Shared letters: ov. Private to "voui": iu. Private to "voûté": téû.

"voui" · 4 letters · shape CVVV  ·  "voûté" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • voui ← ovui · voiu · vuoi · vvoui

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "voui" for "voûté" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "voui" is an adverb and "voûté" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "voui" vs "voûté" - which ranks higher?
"voui" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #45,950 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.

What to do next

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "voui" 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 #3,430 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "voui" and "voûté" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "voui vs voy". 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 #3,430 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