desvsdevisWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: des is a article, devis is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“des” is an article and “devis” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#10
“des” frequency rank
#13,353
“devis” frequency rank
13363
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature des devis
Definition Article indéfini du pluriel. C’est ainsi le pluriel de un ou une. Menus propos, entretien familier.

Where the eye mixes des and devis

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

3 ch
des
5 ch
devis

Why the eye confuses des with devis

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: des is \de\ while devis is \də.vi\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 2 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (article vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 13363, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

des is recorded at frequency rank #10, classified as anarticle, pronounced \de\. devis is at rank #13,353, tagged as anoun, pronounced \də.vi\.

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 13363, this pair ranks #401,323 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of des vs devis

Shared letters: des. Private to "des": -. Private to "devis": iv.

"des" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "devis" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • devisddevis · deivs · deviss · devsi · devvis · dveis · edvis

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "des" and "devis" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "des" is an article and "devis" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "des" or "devis" show up more?
"des" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #10 in our French list, against #13,353 for "devis". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "des" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "devis" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #401,323 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "des" and "devis" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "denim vs devis". 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 #401,323 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