apprisvsapprisesTell them apart

Quick tell: appris is a verb, apprises is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“appris” is a verb and “apprises” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#1,315
“appris” frequency rank
#35,810
“apprises” frequency rank
37125
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature appris apprises
Definition Participe passé masculin (singulier ou pluriel) du verbe apprendre. Féminin pluriel de appris.

Where the eye mixes appris and apprises

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 6 letters in sequence.

6 ch
appris
8 ch
apprises

Visual trap between appris and apprises

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: appris is \a.pʁi\ while apprises is \a.pʁiz\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “appris” sits inside “apprises”, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 37125, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

appris is recorded at frequency rank #1,315, classified as averb, pronounced \a.pʁi\. apprises is at rank #35,810, tagged as anadj, pronounced \a.pʁiz\.

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 37125, this pair ranks #264,702 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of appris vs apprises

Shared letters: aiprs. Private to "appris": -. Private to "apprises": e.

"appris" · 6 letters · shape VCCCVC  ·  "apprises" · 8 letters · shape VCCCVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • apprisappirs · appriss · apprris · apprsi · aprpis · papris
  • apprisesappirses · appriess · apprisess · apprisses · apprrises · apprsies · aprises · aprpises

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "appris" for "apprises" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "appris" is a verb and "apprises" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "appris" or "apprises" show up more?
"appris" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,315 in our French list, against #35,810 for "apprises". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "appris" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "apprises" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #264,702 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "appris" and "apprises" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "apprises vs appuies". 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 #264,702 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