cinglévscinglésWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#30,523
“cinglé” frequency rank
#40,670
“cinglés” frequency rank
71193
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cinglé cinglés
Definition Fou. Masculin pluriel de cinglé.

Same sound, different letters: cinglé vs cinglés

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 6 letters.

6 ch
cinglé
7 ch
cinglés

Homophone desk: cinglé vs cinglés

This is the hard kind. cinglé and cinglés are pronounced identically (\sɛ̃.ɡle\) and both work as anadjective. 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) - “cinglé” sits inside “cinglés”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 71193, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cinglé is recorded at frequency rank #30,523, classified as anadj, pronounced \sɛ̃.ɡle\. cinglés is at rank #40,670, tagged as anadj, pronounced \sɛ̃.ɡle\.

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 71193, this pair ranks #48,472 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of cinglé vs cinglés

Shared letters: cgilné. Private to "cinglé": -. Private to "cinglés": s.

"cinglé" · 6 letters · shape CVCCCV  ·  "cinglés" · 7 letters · shape CVCCCVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "cinglé" for "cinglés" ever safe?
No. They are pronounced the same (\sɛ̃.ɡle\), 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 "cinglé" or "cinglés" show up more?
"cinglé" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #30,523 in our French list, against #40,670 for "cinglés". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "cinglé" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "cinglés" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #48,472 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cinglé" and "cinglés" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "cinglés vs congres". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #48,472 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