chairevschairesTell them apart

Which to use

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

#9,287
“chaire” frequency rank
#38,196
“chaires” frequency rank
47483
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature chaire chaires
Definition Sorte de tribune élevée et ordinairement surmontée d’un dais ou baldaquin dans laquelle se place le prêtre ou le pasteur pour prêcher, pour faire quelque lecture aux assistants, etc. Pluriel de chaire.

Same sound, different letters: chaire vs chaires

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 6 letters. chaire runs 6 letters (CCVVCV) against chaires's 7 (CCVVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
chaire
7 ch
chaires

Ear matches; page differs - chaire and chaires

This is the hard kind. chaire and chaires are pronounced identically (\ʃɛʁ\) 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) - “chaire” sits inside “chaires”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 47483, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

chaire is recorded at frequency rank #9,287, classified as anoun, pronounced \ʃɛʁ\. chaires is at rank #38,196, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ʃɛʁ\.

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 47483, this pair ranks #186,599 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of chaire vs chaires

Shared letters: acehir. Private to "chaire": -. Private to "chaires": s.

"chaire" · 6 letters · shape CCVVCV  ·  "chaires" · 7 letters · shape CCVVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • chairecchaire · chairre · charie · chhaire · chiare · hcaire
  • chairescchaires · chairess · chairres · chairse · charies · chhaires · chiares · hcaires

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "chaire" for "chaires" ever safe?
No. They are pronounced the same (\ʃɛʁ\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
In ordinary French text, does "chaire" or "chaires" show up more?
"chaire" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #9,287 in our French list, against #38,196 for "chaires". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

"chaire" and "chaires" share a sound, keep the gloss open, then jump to the headword or a nearby trap.

  • Full dictionary entry for "chaire" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "chaires" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #186,599 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "chaire" and "chaires" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "chaires vs chantres". 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 #186,599 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