Which to use
“arms” and “army” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #37,175
- “arms” frequency rank
- #20,358
- “army” frequency rank
- 57533
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | arms | army |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Armoiries, blason. | Armée (plus particulièrement armée de terre), groupe organisé de soldats. |
Where the eye mixes arms and army
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.
Look-alike desk: arms vs army
A purely visual mix-up. arms (\ɑːmz\) and army (\ˈɑɹ.mi\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by a single letter - s in “arms” becomes y in “army”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 57533, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
arms is recorded at frequency rank #37,175, classified as anoun, pronounced \ɑːmz\. army is at rank #20,358, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ˈɑɹ.mi\.
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 57533, this pair ranks #114,480 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of arms vs army
Shared letters: amr. Private to "arms": s. Private to "army": y.
"arms" · 4 letters · shape VCCC · "army" · 4 letters · shape VCCV
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "arms" and "army" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Frequency check: "arms" vs "army" - which ranks higher?
After this comparison
Eye-level mix-up between "arms" and "army" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "arms" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "army" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #114,480 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "arms" and "army" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "arms vs aves". 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 #114,480 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.