Which to use
“arête” and “arêtes” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #17,875
- “arête” frequency rank
- #23,766
- “arêtes” frequency rank
- 41641
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | arête | arêtes |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Os long, mince et pointu qui se trouve dans la chair de certains poissons. | Pluriel de arête. |
Same sound, different letters: arête vs arêtes
Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 5 letters. arête runs 5 letters (VCVCV) against arêtes's 6 (VCVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Ear matches; page differs - arête and arêtes
This is the hard kind. arête and arêtes are pronounced identically (\a.ʁɛt\) 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 1 extra letter(s) - “arête” sits inside “arêtes”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 41641, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
arête is recorded at frequency rank #17,875, classified as anoun, pronounced \a.ʁɛt\. arêtes is at rank #23,766, tagged as anoun, pronounced \a.ʁɛt\.
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 41641, this pair ranks #231,590 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of arête vs arêtes
Shared letters: aertê. Private to "arête": -. Private to "arêtes": s.
"arête" · 5 letters · shape VCVCV · "arêtes" · 6 letters · shape VCVCVC
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "arête" and "arêtes" mean the same thing in a sentence?
In ordinary French text, does "arête" or "arêtes" show up more?
Useful next steps
Sound matches; spelling doesn't. Use the exits below to lock the right form or check a cousin pair.
- Full dictionary entry for "arête" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "arêtes" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #231,590 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "arête" and "arêtes" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "arêtes vs Artis". Nearby pair
Confusion rank #231,590 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.