damasvsdîmesWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#9,304
“damas” frequency rank
#41,760
“dîmes” frequency rank
51064
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature damas dîmes
Definition Étoffe de soie à fleurs ou à dessins en relief où le satin et le taffetas sont mêlés ensemble et qui se fabriquait originairement à Damas, en Syrie ; les fleurs sont en satin à l’endroit et forment le taffetas et le fond de l’envers, et le taffetas qui fait le fond à l’endroit est le satin de l’envers. Pluriel de dîme.

Where the eye mixes damas and dîmes

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. damas and dîmes follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

5 ch
damas
5 ch
dîmes

Why the eye confuses damas with dîmes

A purely visual mix-up. damas (\da.ma\) and dîmes (\dim\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 51064, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

damas is recorded at frequency rank #9,304, classified as anoun, pronounced \da.ma\. dîmes is at rank #41,760, tagged as anoun, pronounced \dim\.

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 51064, this pair ranks #157,869 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of damas vs dîmes

Shared letters: dms. Private to "damas": a. Private to "dîmes": eî.

"damas" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "dîmes" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • damas ← admas · daams · damass · dammas · damsa · ddamas · dmaas

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "damas" for "dîmes" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\da.ma\ versus \dim\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "damas" vs "dîmes" - which ranks higher?
"damas" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #9,304 in our French list, against #41,760 for "dîmes". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "damas" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "dîmes" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #157,869 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "damas" and "dîmes" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "diez vs dîmes". 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 #157,869 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