curevscuresTell them apart

Which to use

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

#7,048
“cure” frequency rank
#30,120
“cures” frequency rank
37168
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cure cures
Definition Soin, souci. — En ce sens, il est surtout usité dans l’expression : n’avoir cure. Pluriel de cure.

Same sound, different letters: cure vs cures

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 4 letters.

4 ch
cure
5 ch
cures

Same sound, different spelling - cure / cures

This is the hard kind. cure and cures are pronounced identically (\kyʁ\) 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) - “cure” sits inside “cures”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 37168, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cure is recorded at frequency rank #7,048, classified as anoun, pronounced \kyʁ\. cures is at rank #30,120, tagged as anoun, pronounced \kyʁ\.

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 37168, this pair ranks #264,404 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of cure vs cures

Shared letters: ceru. Private to "cure": -. Private to "cures": s.

"cure" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "cures" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • cureccure · cuer · curre · ucre
  • curesccures · cuers · curess · curres · curse · ucres

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "cure" and "cures" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are pronounced the same (\kyʁ\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
Frequency check: "cure" vs "cures" - which ranks higher?
"cure" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #7,048 in our French list, against #30,120 for "cures". 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 "cure" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "cures" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #264,404 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cure" and "cures" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "courges vs cures". 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 #264,404 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