cannonvscanonsWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#35,849
“cannon” frequency rank
#6,271
“canons” frequency rank
42120
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cannon canons
Definition Canon (artillerie). Pluriel de canon.

Letter map: cannon vs canons

Shared letters muted; letters that set cannon and canons apart highlighted. Shared run: 5. cannon (CVCCVC) and canons (CVCVCC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

6 ch
cannon
6 ch
canons

Part-of-speech tell for cannon / canons

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: cannon is anoun and canonsanadjective. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 42120, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cannon is recorded at frequency rank #35,849, classified as anoun. canons is at rank #6,271, tagged as anadj, pronounced \ka.nɔ̃\.

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 42120, this pair ranks #228,079 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of cannon vs canons

Shared letters: acno. Private to "cannon": -. Private to "canons": s.

"cannon" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC  ·  "canons" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • cannon ← acnnon · cannno · cannonn · ccannon · cnanon
  • canons ← acnons · cannons · cannos · canonns · canonss · canosn · caonns · ccanons

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "cannon" and "canons" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "cannon" is a noun and "canons" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "cannon" or "canons" show up more?
"canons" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #6,271 in our French list, against #35,849 for "cannon". 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 "cannon" and "canons".

  • Full dictionary entry for "cannon" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "canons" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #228,079 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cannon" and "canons" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cannon vs canyons". 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 #228,079 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