aurvsaurayWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#49,504
“aur” frequency rank
#38,659
“auray” frequency rank
88163
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature aur auray
Definition Or. Élément chimique de numéro atomique 79 et de symbole Au qui fait partie des métaux de transition. Bloc de pierre, pièce de bois, mauvais canon, etc., pour amarrer.

Letter map: aur vs auray

Shared letters muted; letters that set aur and auray apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

3 ch
aur
5 ch
auray

Pair insight - aur / auray

aur and auray are indexed as a confusable French pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “aur” sits inside “auray”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 88163, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

aur is recorded at frequency rank #49,504, classified as anoun, pronounced \ˈawɾ\. auray is at rank #38,659, tagged as anoun.

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 88163, this pair ranks #7,336 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of aur vs auray

Shared letters: aru. Private to "aur": -. Private to "auray": y.

"aur" · 3 letters · shape VVC  ·  "auray" · 5 letters · shape VVCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • aurayaruay · auary · aurayy · aurray · aurya · uaray

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "aur" for "auray" ever safe?
No. They differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “aur” sits inside “auray”, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
In ordinary French text, does "aur" or "auray" show up more?
"auray" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #38,659 in our French list, against #49,504 for "aur". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "aur" and "auray".

  • Full dictionary entry for "aur" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "auray" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #7,336 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "aur" and "auray" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Ahn 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 #7,336 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