armyvsaruWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#20,358
“army” frequency rank
#48,924
“aru” frequency rank
69282
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature army aru
Definition Armée (plus particulièrement armée de terre), groupe organisé de soldats. Vagin.

Where the eye mixes army and aru

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence. army runs 4 letters (VCCV) against aru's 3 (VCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
army
3 ch
aru

Look-alike desk: army vs aru

A purely visual mix-up. army (\ˈɑɹ.mi\) and aru (\aru\) 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 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 69282, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

army is recorded at frequency rank #20,358, classified as anoun, pronounced \ˈɑɹ.mi\. aru is at rank #48,924, tagged as anoun, pronounced \aru\.

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 69282, this pair ranks #55,761 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of army vs aru

Shared letters: ar. Private to "army": my. Private to "aru": u.

"army" · 4 letters · shape VCCV  ·  "aru" · 3 letters · shape VCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • army ← armmy · armyy · arrmy · arym · ramy

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "army" for "aru" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\ˈɑɹ.mi\ versus \aru\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "army" or "aru"?
"army" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #20,358 in our French list, against #48,924 for "aru". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "army" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "aru" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #55,761 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "army" and "aru" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "aru vs aur". 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 #55,761 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