Which to use
“drone” and “drones” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #9,472
- “drone” frequency rank
- #10,860
- “drones” frequency rank
- 20332
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | drone | drones |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Engin mobile terrestre, aérien, naval ou spatial, sans équipage embarqué, programmé ou télécommandé, et qui peut être réutilisé. | Pluriel de drone. |
Where the eye mixes drone and drones
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence.
Visual trap between drone and drones
A purely visual mix-up. drone (\dʁon\) and drones (\dʁɔn\) 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) - “drone” sits inside “drones”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 20332, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
drone is recorded at frequency rank #9,472, classified as anoun, pronounced \dʁon\. drones is at rank #10,860, tagged as anoun, pronounced \dʁɔn\.
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 20332, this pair ranks #368,812 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of drone vs drones
Shared letters: denor. Private to "drone": -. Private to "drones": s.
"drone" · 5 letters · shape CCVCV · "drones" · 6 letters · shape CCVCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "drone" and "drones" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Which is more common, "drone" or "drones"?
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 "drone" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "drones" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #368,812 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "drone" and "drones" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "drone vs drunk". 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 #368,812 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.