Which to use
“director” and “directory” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #40,213
- “director” frequency rank
- #46,700
- “directory” frequency rank
- 86913
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | director | directory |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Directeur. | Carnet d’adresses, annuaire, bottin. |
Where the eye mixes director and directory
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 8 letters in sequence.
Why the eye confuses director with directory
A purely visual mix-up. director (\di.rek.ˈtor\) and directory (\daɪ.ˈɹɛk.tɹi\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “director” sits inside “directory”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 86913, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
director is recorded at frequency rank #40,213, classified as anoun, pronounced \di.rek.ˈtor\. directory is at rank #46,700, tagged as anoun, pronounced \daɪ.ˈɹɛk.tɹi\.
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 86913, this pair ranks #9,014 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of director vs directory
Shared letters: cdeiort. Private to "director": -. Private to "directory": y.
"director" · 8 letters · shape CVCVCCVC · "directory" · 9 letters · shape CVCVCCVCV
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "director" and "directory" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Which is more common, "director" or "directory"?
Useful next steps
Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.
- Full dictionary entry for "director" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "directory" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #9,014 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "director" and "directory" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "directoire vs directory". 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 #9,014 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.