Which to use
“cime” and “cimes” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #32,745
- “cime” frequency rank
- #37,727
- “cimes” frequency rank
- 70472
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | cime | cimes |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Partie la plus haute d’une montagne, d’un rocher, d’un arbre, etc. | Pluriel de cime. |
Same sound, different letters: cime vs cimes
Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 4 letters. cime runs 4 letters (CVCV) against cimes's 5 (CVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Ear matches; page differs - cime and cimes
This is the hard kind. cime and cimes are pronounced identically (\sim\) 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) - “cime” sits inside “cimes”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 70472, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
cime is recorded at frequency rank #32,745, classified as anoun, pronounced \sim\. cimes is at rank #37,727, tagged as anoun, pronounced \sim\.
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 70472, this pair ranks #51,204 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of cime vs cimes
Shared letters: ceim. Private to "cime": -. Private to "cimes": s.
"cime" · 4 letters · shape CVCV · "cimes" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "cime" and "cimes" mean the same thing in a sentence?
In ordinary French text, does "cime" or "cimes" show up more?
What to do next
You've separated the homophone pair "cime" / "cimes". Follow the links when you need the full entry or a neighbour that trips the same ear.
- Full dictionary entry for "cime" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "cimes" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #51,204 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "cime" and "cimes" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cakes vs cimes". 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 #51,204 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.