Which to use
“voulu” is a verb and “voûté” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #930
- “voulu” frequency rank
- #45,952
- “voûté” frequency rank
- 46882
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | voulu | voûté |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Participe passé masculin singulier du verbe vouloir. | Qui présente une voûte, qui est recourbé. |
Where the eye mixes voulu and voûté
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence. voulu and voûté follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Look-alike desk: voulu vs voûté
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: voulu is \vu.ly\ while voûté is \vu.te\. 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 (verb vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 46882, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
voulu is recorded at frequency rank #930, classified as averb, pronounced \vu.ly\. 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 46882, this pair ranks #191,302 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of voulu vs voûté
Shared letters: ov. Private to "voulu": lu. Private to "voûté": téû.
"voulu" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV · "voûté" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV
Known mistypes of this pair
- voulu ← ovulu · voluu · voullu · vouul · vuolu · vvoulu
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "voulu" and "voûté" mean the same thing in a sentence?
In ordinary French text, does "voulu" or "voûté" show up more?
After this comparison
Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.
- Full dictionary entry for "voulu" 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 #191,302 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "voulu" 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 #191,302 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.