Which to use
“difficulté” and “difficultés” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #2,072
- “difficulté” frequency rank
- #1,911
- “difficultés” frequency rank
- 3983
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | difficulté | difficultés |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Ce qui rend une chose difficile. | Pluriel de difficulté. |
Same sound, different letters: difficulté vs difficultés
Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 10 letters.
Same sound, different spelling - difficulté / difficultés
This is the hard kind. difficulté and difficultés are pronounced identically (\di.fi.kyl.te\) and both work as anoun. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “difficulté” sits inside “difficultés”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 3983, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
difficulté is recorded at frequency rank #2,072, classified as anoun, pronounced \di.fi.kyl.te\. difficultés is at rank #1,911, tagged as anoun, pronounced \di.fi.kyl.te\.
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 3983, this pair ranks #432,735 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of difficulté vs difficultés
Shared letters: cdfiltué. Private to "difficulté": -. Private to "difficultés": s.
"difficulté" · 10 letters · shape CVCCVCVCCV · "difficultés" · 11 letters · shape CVCCVCVCCVC
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "difficulté" and "difficultés" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Which is more common, "difficulté" or "difficultés"?
Useful next steps
You've separated the homophone pair "difficulté" / "difficultés". Follow the links when you need the full entry or a neighbour that trips the same ear.
- Full dictionary entry for "difficulté" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "difficultés" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #432,735 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "difficulté" and "difficultés" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "difficiles vs difficultés". Nearby pair
Confusion rank #432,735 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.