Which to use
“attend” and “attends” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #1,106
- “attend” frequency rank
- #1,468
- “attends” frequency rank
- 2574
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | attend | attends |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Troisième personne du singulier de l’indicatif présent de attendre. | Première personne du singulier de l’indicatif présent de attendre. |
Same sound, different letters: attend vs attends
Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 6 letters.
Ear matches; page differs - attend and attends
This is the hard kind. attend and attends are pronounced identically (\a.tɑ̃\) and both work as averb. 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) - “attend” sits inside “attends”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 2574, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
attend is recorded at frequency rank #1,106, classified as averb, pronounced \a.tɑ̃\. attends is at rank #1,468, tagged as averb, pronounced \a.tɑ̃\.
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 2574, this pair ranks #435,876 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of attend vs attends
Shared letters: adent. Private to "attend": -. Private to "attends": s.
"attend" · 6 letters · shape VCCVCC · "attends" · 7 letters · shape VCCVCCC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Can "attend" and "attends" be used interchangeably?
Frequency check: "attend" vs "attends" - which ranks higher?
What to do next
You've separated the homophone pair "attend" / "attends". Follow the links when you need the full entry or a neighbour that trips the same ear.
- Full dictionary entry for "attend" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "attends" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #435,876 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "attend" and "attends" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Athena vs attend". 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 #435,876 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.