adulévsadultesWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#45,415
“adulé” frequency rank
#2,977
“adultes” frequency rank
48392
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature adulé adultes
Definition Qualifie une personne ou une entité flattée avec excès. Pluriel de adulte.

Where the eye mixes adulé and adultes

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. adulé runs 5 letters (VCVCV) against adultes's 7 (VCVCCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
adulé
7 ch
adultes

Look-alike desk: adulé vs adultes

A purely visual mix-up. adulé (\a.dy.le\) and adultes (\a.dylt\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 48392, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

adulé is recorded at frequency rank #45,415, classified as anadj, pronounced \a.dy.le\. adultes is at rank #2,977, tagged as anadj, pronounced \a.dylt\.

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 48392, this pair ranks #179,289 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of adulé vs adultes

Shared letters: adlu. Private to "adulé": é. Private to "adultes": est.

"adulé" · 5 letters · shape VCVCV  ·  "adultes" · 7 letters · shape VCVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • adultes ← addultes · adlutes · adulets · adulltes · adultess · adultse · adulttes · adutles

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "adulé" and "adultes" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (\a.dy.le\ versus \a.dylt\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "adulé" or "adultes"?
"adultes" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,977 in our French list, against #45,415 for "adulé". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

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 "adulé" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "adultes" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #179,289 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "adulé" and "adultes" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "adulé vs Aure". 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 #179,289 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