abavsabatsWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

“aba” and “abats” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#48,886
“aba” frequency rank
#39,618
“abats” frequency rank
88504
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature aba abats
Definition Manteau de laine en usage en Turquie et dans l’ancienne Perse. Pluriel de abat.

Same sound, different letters: aba vs abats

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 3 letters. aba runs 3 letters (VCV) against abats's 5 (VCVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

3 ch
aba
5 ch
abats

Ear matches; page differs - aba and abats

This is the hard kind. aba and abats are pronounced identically (\a.ba\) and both work as anoun. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “aba” sits inside “abats”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 88504, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

aba is recorded at frequency rank #48,886, classified as anoun, pronounced \a.ba\. abats is at rank #39,618, tagged as anoun, pronounced \a.ba\.

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 88504, this pair ranks #6,911 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of aba vs abats

Shared letters: ab. Private to "aba": -. Private to "abats": st.

"aba" · 3 letters · shape VCV  ·  "abats" · 5 letters · shape VCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • abats ← aabts · abast · abatss · abatts · abbats · abtas · baats

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "aba" and "abats" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are pronounced the same (\a.ba\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
Frequency check: "aba" vs "abats" - which ranks higher?
"abats" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #39,618 in our French list, against #48,886 for "aba". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

"aba" and "abats" share a sound, keep the gloss open, then jump to the headword or a nearby trap.

  • Full dictionary entry for "aba" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "abats" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #6,911 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "aba" and "abats" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "aba vs aur". 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 #6,911 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