Which to use
“aire” and “airs” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #5,629
- “aire” frequency rank
- #6,583
- “airs” frequency rank
- 12212
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | aire | airs |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Superficie, quantité positive associée à une surface bornée, plane ou dans l’espace à trois dimensions. | Pluriel de air. |
Same sound, different letters: aire vs airs
Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 3 letters. aire (VVCV) and airs (VVCC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.
Ear matches; page differs - aire and airs
This is the hard kind. aire and airs are pronounced identically (\ɛʁ\) 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 a single letter - e in “aire” becomes s in “airs”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 12212, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
aire is recorded at frequency rank #5,629, classified as anoun, pronounced \ɛʁ\. airs is at rank #6,583, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ɛʁ\.
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 12212, this pair ranks #406,151 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of aire vs airs
Shared letters: air. Private to "aire": e. Private to "airs": s.
"aire" · 4 letters · shape VVCV · "airs" · 4 letters · shape VVCC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "aire" for "airs" ever safe?
Frequency check: "aire" vs "airs" - which ranks higher?
What to do next
Sound matches; spelling doesn't. Use the exits below to lock the right form or check a cousin pair.
- Full dictionary entry for "aire" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "airs" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #406,151 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "aire" and "airs" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "airs vs aves". 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 #406,151 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.