dévolu vs dévolues, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#22,249
“dévolu” frequency rank: #46,133
“dévolues” frequency rank: 68382
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	dévolu	dévolues
Definition	Transféré d’une personne à une autre, qui est échu à quelqu’un.	Féminin pluriel de dévolu.

Same sound, different letters: dévolu vs dévolues

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 6 letters. dévolu runs 6 letters (CVCVCV) against dévolues's 8 (CVCVCVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch

dévolu

8 ch

dévolues

Same sound, different spelling - dévolu / dévolues

This is the hard kind. dévolu and dévolues are pronounced identically (\de.vɔ.ly\) and both work as anadjective. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “dévolu” sits inside “dévolues”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 68382, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

dévolu is recorded at frequency rank #22,249, classified as anadj, pronounced \de.vɔ.ly\. dévolues is at rank #46,133, tagged as anadj, pronounced \de.vɔ.ly\.

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 68382, this pair ranks #59,407 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of dévolu vs dévolues

Shared letters: dlouvé. Private to "dévolu": -. Private to "dévolues": es.

"dévolu" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV · "dévolues" · 8 letters · shape CVCVCVVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "dévolu" and "dévolues" mean the same thing in a sentence?

No. They are pronounced the same (\de.vɔ.ly\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.

Frequency check: "dévolu" vs "dévolues" - which ranks higher?

"dévolu" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #22,249 in our French list, against #46,133 for "dévolues". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

"dévolu" and "dévolues" share a sound, keep the gloss open, then jump to the headword or a nearby trap.

Full dictionary entry for "dévolu" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "dévolues" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #59,407 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"dévolu" and "dévolues" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "dévolues vs dévolus". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #59,407 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.