allervsallésWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#201
“aller” frequency rank
#6,584
“allés” frequency rank
6785
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature aller allés
Definition Se déplacer jusqu'à un endroit. Masculin pluriel du participe passé du verbe aller.

Same sound, different letters: aller vs allés

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 3 letters.

5 ch
aller
5 ch
allés

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

This is the hard kind. aller and allés are pronounced identically (\a.le\) and both work as averb. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 6785, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

aller is recorded at frequency rank #201, classified as averb, pronounced \a.le\. allés is at rank #6,584, tagged as averb, pronounced \a.le\.

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 6785, this pair ranks #425,237 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of aller vs allés

Shared letters: al. Private to "aller": er. Private to "allés": .

"aller" · 5 letters · shape VCCVC  ·  "allés" · 5 letters · shape VCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • alleralelr · aler · allerr · allre · laler

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "aller" and "allés" be used interchangeably?
No. They are pronounced the same (\a.le\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
Which is more common, "aller" or "allés"?
"aller" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #201 in our French list, against #6,584 for "allés". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

You've compared "aller" and "allés". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "aller" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "allés" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #425,237 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "aller" and "allés" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "allés 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

PlainSpell is a reference corpus, not spelling advice. Verify unusual forms in context.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list