appliquesvsappliquonsTell them apart

Quick tell: appliques is a noun, appliquons is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“appliques” is a noun and “appliquons” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#37,173
“appliques” frequency rank
#45,435
“appliquons” frequency rank
82608
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature appliques appliquons
Definition Pluriel de applique. Première personne du pluriel de l’indicatif présent du verbe appliquer.

Where the eye mixes appliques and appliquons

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 8 letters in sequence. appliques runs 9 letters (VCCCVCVVC) against appliquons's 10 (VCCCVCVVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

9 ch
appliques
10 ch
appliquons

Why the eye confuses appliques with appliquons

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: appliques is \a.plik\ while appliquons is \a.pli.kɔ̃\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 82608, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

appliques is recorded at frequency rank #37,173, classified as anoun, pronounced \a.plik\. appliquons is at rank #45,435, tagged as averb, pronounced \a.pli.kɔ̃\.

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 82608, this pair ranks #16,382 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of appliques vs appliquons

Shared letters: ailpqsu. Private to "appliques": e. Private to "appliquons": no.

"appliques" · 9 letters · shape VCCCVCVVC  ·  "appliquons" · 10 letters · shape VCCCVCVVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • appliques ← apliques · aplpiques · appilques · appliqeus · appliqques · appliquess · appliquse · appliuqes
  • appliquons ← apliquons · aplpiquons · appilquons · appliqouns · appliqquons · appliqunos · appliquonns · appliquonss

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "appliques" for "appliquons" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "appliques" is a noun and "appliquons" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "appliques" or "appliquons" show up more?
"appliques" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #37,173 in our French list, against #45,435 for "appliquons". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "appliques" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "appliquons" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #16,382 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "appliques" and "appliquons" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "appliques vs appliquez". 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 #16,382 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