aurayvsawayWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: auray is a noun, away is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“auray” is a noun and “away” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#38,659
“auray” frequency rank
#20,367
“away” frequency rank
59026
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature auray away
Definition Bloc de pierre, pièce de bois, mauvais canon, etc., pour amarrer. Parti.

Letter map: auray vs away

Shared letters muted; letters that set auray and away apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. auray runs 5 letters (VVCVV) against away's 4 (VCVV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
auray
4 ch
away

Role in the sentence - auray and away

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: auray is anoun and awayanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 59026, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

auray is recorded at frequency rank #38,659, classified as anoun. away is at rank #20,367, tagged as anadj, pronounced \ə.ˈweɪ\.

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 59026, this pair ranks #105,516 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of auray vs away

Shared letters: ay. Private to "auray": ru. Private to "away": w.

"auray" · 5 letters · shape VVCVV  ·  "away" · 4 letters · shape VCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • auray ← aruay · auary · aurayy · aurray · aurya · uaray
  • away ← aawy · awayy · awway · awya · waay

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "auray" and "away" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "auray" is a noun and "away" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "auray" or "away"?
"away" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #20,367 in our French list, against #38,659 for "auray". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "auray" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "away" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #105,516 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "auray" and "away" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "aur vs auray". 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 #105,516 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