boardvsbordsWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#13,742
“board” frequency rank
#5,527
“bords” frequency rank
19269
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature board bords
Definition Planche à roulettes. Pluriel de bord.

Where the eye mixes board and bords

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.

5 ch
board
5 ch
bords

Visual trap between board and bords

A purely visual mix-up. board (\bɔʁd\) and bords (\bɔʁ\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 19269, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

board is recorded at frequency rank #13,742, classified as anoun, pronounced \bɔʁd\. bords is at rank #5,527, tagged as anoun, pronounced \bɔʁ\.

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 19269, this pair ranks #374,089 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of board vs bords

Shared letters: bdor. Private to "board": a. Private to "bords": s.

"board" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC  ·  "bords" · 5 letters · shape CVCCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • boardbboard · boadr · boardd · boarrd · borad · obard
  • bordsbbords · bodrs · bordds · bordss · borrds · borsd · brods · obrds

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "board" and "bords" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (\bɔʁd\ versus \bɔʁ\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary French text, does "board" or "bords" show up more?
"bords" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #5,527 in our French list, against #13,742 for "board". 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 "board" and "bords" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "board" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "bords" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #374,089 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "board" and "bords" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "board vs bold". 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 #374,089 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