commandovscommandosTell them apart

Which to use

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

#14,637
“commando” frequency rank
#25,937
“commandos” frequency rank
40574
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature commando commandos
Definition Unité spéciale entraînée pour exécuter des missions dangereuses sur des objectifs déterminés. Pluriel de commando.

Same sound, different letters: commando vs commandos

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 8 letters.

8 ch
commando
9 ch
commandos

Same sound, different spelling - commando / commandos

This is the hard kind. commando and commandos are pronounced identically (\kɔ.mɑ̃.do\) 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) - “commando” sits inside “commandos”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 40574, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

commando is recorded at frequency rank #14,637, classified as anoun, pronounced \kɔ.mɑ̃.do\. commandos is at rank #25,937, tagged as anoun, pronounced \kɔ.mɑ̃.do\.

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 40574, this pair ranks #239,496 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of commando vs commandos

Shared letters: acdmno. Private to "commando": -. Private to "commandos": s.

"commando" · 8 letters · shape CVCCVCCV  ·  "commandos" · 9 letters · shape CVCCVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • commandoccommando · cmomando · comamndo · comando · commadno · commanddo · commanndo · commanod
  • commandosccommandos · cmomandos · comamndos · comandos · commadnos · commanddos · commandoss · commandso

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "commando" and "commandos" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are pronounced the same (\kɔ.mɑ̃.do\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
Frequency check: "commando" vs "commandos" - which ranks higher?
"commando" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #14,637 in our French list, against #25,937 for "commandos". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Sound matches; spelling doesn't. Use the exits below to lock the right form or check a cousin pair.

  • Full dictionary entry for "commando" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "commandos" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #239,496 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "commando" and "commandos" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "command vs commandos". 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 #239,496 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