déliresvsdoloresWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#13,161
“délires” frequency rank
#33,216
“dolores” frequency rank
46377
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature délires dolores
Definition Pluriel de délire. Pluriel de dolor.

Where the eye mixes délires and dolores

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. délires and dolores follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCVCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

7 ch
délires
7 ch
dolores

Look-alike desk: délires vs dolores

A purely visual mix-up. délires (\de.liʁ\) and dolores (\doˈlo.ɾes\) 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 46377, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

délires is recorded at frequency rank #13,161, classified as anoun, pronounced \de.liʁ\. dolores is at rank #33,216, tagged as anoun, pronounced \doˈlo.ɾes\.

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 46377, this pair ranks #195,451 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of délires vs dolores

Shared letters: delrs. Private to "délires": ié. Private to "dolores": o.

"délires" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCVC  ·  "dolores" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • dolores ← ddolores · dloores · dollores · doloers · doloress · dolorres · dolorse · dolroes

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "délires" for "dolores" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\de.liʁ\ versus \doˈlo.ɾes\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary French text, does "délires" or "dolores" show up more?
"délires" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #13,161 in our French list, against #33,216 for "dolores". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Eye-level mix-up between "délires" and "dolores" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "délires" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "dolores" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #195,451 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "délires" and "dolores" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Delors vs dolores". 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 #195,451 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