armaturevsarmaturesWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#27,696
“armature” frequency rank
#40,601
“armatures” frequency rank
68297
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature armature armatures
Definition Ensemble des pièces de bois ou de métal qui servent à maintenir les parties d’un ouvrage, en construction ou achevé : Pluriel de armature.

Same sound, different letters: armature vs armatures

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 8 letters. armature runs 8 letters (VCCVCVCV) against armatures's 9 (VCCVCVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

8 ch
armature
9 ch
armatures

Ear matches; page differs - armature and armatures

This is the hard kind. armature and armatures are pronounced identically (\aʁ.ma.tyʁ\) 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) - “armature” sits inside “armatures”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 68297, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

armature is recorded at frequency rank #27,696, classified as anoun, pronounced \aʁ.ma.tyʁ\. armatures is at rank #40,601, tagged as anoun, pronounced \aʁ.ma.tyʁ\.

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 68297, this pair ranks #59,740 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of armature vs armatures

Shared letters: aemrtu. Private to "armature": -. Private to "armatures": s.

"armature" · 8 letters · shape VCCVCVCV  ·  "armatures" · 9 letters · shape VCCVCVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • armature ← amrature · aramture · armatrue · armatture · armaturre · armautre · armmature · armtaure
  • armatures ← amratures · aramtures · armatrues · armattures · armaturess · armaturres · armaturse · armautres

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "armature" for "armatures" ever safe?
No. They are pronounced the same (\aʁ.ma.tyʁ\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
In ordinary French text, does "armature" or "armatures" show up more?
"armature" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #27,696 in our French list, against #40,601 for "armatures". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "armature" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "armatures" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #59,740 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "armature" and "armatures" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "armateurs vs armatures". 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 #59,740 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