deglivsdelaTell them apart

Quick tell: degli is a article, dela is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“degli” is an article and “dela” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#42,274
“degli” frequency rank
#19,803
“dela” frequency rank
62077
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature degli dela
Definition Article contracté souvent traduit par des. Note d’usage : il s’emploie alternativement à dei devant les consonnes impures : s, gn, pn, ps, x, z. Exprimer un sentiment par un jeu de mine.

Letter map: degli vs dela

Shared letters muted; letters that set degli and dela apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. degli runs 5 letters (CVCCV) against dela's 4 (CVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
degli
4 ch
dela

Part-of-speech tell for degli / dela

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: degli is anarticle and delaaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 62077, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

degli is recorded at frequency rank #42,274, classified as anarticle, pronounced \ˈdeʎ.ʎi\. dela is at rank #19,803, tagged as averb.

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 62077, this pair ranks #88,938 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of degli vs dela

Shared letters: del. Private to "degli": gi. Private to "dela": a.

"degli" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "dela" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • degli ← ddegli · deggli · degil · deglli · delgi · dgeli · edgli
  • dela ← ddela · dlea · edla

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "degli" and "dela" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "degli" is an article and "dela" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "degli" vs "dela" - which ranks higher?
"dela" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #19,803 in our French list, against #42,274 for "degli". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "degli" and "dela".

  • Full dictionary entry for "degli" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "dela" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #88,938 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "degli" and "dela" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "degli vs DGSI". 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 #88,938 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