Which to use
“borne” and “bornes” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #8,814
- “borne” frequency rank
- #5,951
- “bornes” frequency rank
- 14765
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | borne | bornes |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Pierre, arbre ou autre marque qui sert à séparer un champ d’avec un autre. | Pluriel de borne. |
Same sound, different letters: borne vs bornes
Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 5 letters.
Same sound, different spelling - borne / bornes
This is the hard kind. borne and bornes are pronounced identically (\bɔʁn\) and both work as anoun. 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) - “borne” sits inside “bornes”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 14765, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
borne is recorded at frequency rank #8,814, classified as anoun, pronounced \bɔʁn\. bornes is at rank #5,951, tagged as anoun, pronounced \bɔʁn\.
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 14765, this pair ranks #395,311 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of borne vs bornes
Shared letters: benor. Private to "borne": -. Private to "bornes": s.
"borne" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV · "bornes" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Can "borne" and "bornes" be used interchangeably?
In ordinary French text, does "borne" or "bornes" show up more?
What to do next
You've separated the homophone pair "borne" / "bornes". Follow the links when you need the full entry or a neighbour that trips the same ear.
- Full dictionary entry for "borne" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "bornes" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #395,311 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "borne" and "bornes" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "bordés vs borne". 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 #395,311 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.