AdolfvsadultWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: Adolf is a name, adult is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“Adolf” is a name and “adult” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#20,629
“Adolf” frequency rank
#37,152
“adult” frequency rank
57781
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Adolf adult
Definition Prénom masculin, correspondant à Adolphe. Adulte.

Letter map: Adolf vs adult

Shared letters muted; letters that set Adolf and adult apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. Adolf and adult follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (VCVCC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

5 ch
Adolf
5 ch
adult

Role in the sentence - Adolf and adult

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: Adolf is aname and adultanadjective. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 57781, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Adolf is recorded at frequency rank #20,629, classified as aname. adult is at rank #37,152, tagged as anadj, pronounced \aˈdʊlt\.

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 57781, this pair ranks #113,004 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of Adolf vs adult

Shared letters: adl. Private to "Adolf": fo. Private to "adult": tu.

"Adolf" · 5 letters · shape VCVCC  ·  "adult" · 5 letters · shape VCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Adolf ← addolf · adlof · adofl · adolff · adollf · aodlf · daolf
  • adult ← addult · adlut · adullt · adultt · adutl · audlt · dault

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "Adolf" and "adult" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Adolf" is a name and "adult" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "Adolf" or "adult" show up more?
"Adolf" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #20,629 in our French list, against #37,152 for "adult". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "Adolf" and "adult".

  • Full dictionary entry for "Adolf" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "adult" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #113,004 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Adolf" and "adult" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "adulé vs adult". 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 #113,004 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