billsvsblésTell them apart

Which to use

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

#38,677
“bills” frequency rank
#34,899
“blés” frequency rank
73576
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature bills blés
Definition Pluriel de bill. Pluriel de blé.

Where the eye mixes bills and blés

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

5 ch
bills
4 ch
blés

Look-alike desk: bills vs blés

A purely visual mix-up. bills (\bil\) and blés (\ble\) 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 73576, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

bills is recorded at frequency rank #38,677, classified as anoun, pronounced \bil\. blés is at rank #34,899, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ble\.

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 73576, this pair ranks #39,989 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of bills vs blés

Shared letters: bls. Private to "bills": i. Private to "blés": é.

"bills" · 5 letters · shape CVCCC  ·  "blés" · 4 letters · shape CCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • billsbbills · billss · bils · bilsl · blils · iblls

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "bills" for "blés" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\bil\ versus \ble\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "bills" vs "blés" - which ranks higher?
"blés" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #34,899 in our French list, against #38,677 for "bills". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Eye-level mix-up between "bills" and "blés" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "bills" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "blés" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #39,989 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "bills" and "blés" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "bibles vs bills". 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 #39,989 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