animalevsanimalesWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: animale is a noun, animales is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“animale” is a noun and “animales” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#7,143
“animale” frequency rank
#11,906
“animales” frequency rank
19049
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature animale animales
Definition Animal femelle. Féminin pluriel de animal.

Same sound, different letters: animale vs animales

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 7 letters.

7 ch
animale
8 ch
animales

Same sound, different spelling - animale / animales

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: animale and animales carry the same recorded pronunciation, \a.ni.mal\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is anoun, the other anadjective, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “animale” sits inside “animales”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 19049, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

animale is recorded at frequency rank #7,143, classified as anoun, pronounced \a.ni.mal\. animales is at rank #11,906, tagged as anadj, pronounced \a.ni.mal\.

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 19049, this pair ranks #375,298 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of animale vs animales

Shared letters: aeilmn. Private to "animale": -. Private to "animales": s.

"animale" · 7 letters · shape VCVCVCV  ·  "animales" · 8 letters · shape VCVCVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • animaleainmale · aniamle · animael · animalle · animlae · animmale · anmiale · annimale
  • animalesainmales · aniamles · animaels · animaless · animalles · animalse · animlaes · animmales

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "animale" and "animales" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "animale" is a noun and "animales" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "animale" or "animales" show up more?
"animale" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #7,143 in our French list, against #11,906 for "animales". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

You've separated the homophone pair "animale" / "animales". Follow the links when you need the full entry or a neighbour that trips the same ear.

  • Full dictionary entry for "animale" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "animales" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #375,298 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "animale" and "animales" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "animales vs animaliers". 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 #375,298 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