émigrévsémigrésTell them apart

Which to use

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

#21,212
“émigré” frequency rank
#21,213
“émigrés” frequency rank
42425
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature émigré émigrés
Definition Qui a quitté son pays. Masculin pluriel de émigré.

Same sound, different letters: émigré vs émigrés

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 6 letters. émigré runs 6 letters (VCVCCV) against émigrés's 7 (VCVCCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
émigré
7 ch
émigrés

Same sound, different spelling - émigré / émigrés

This is the hard kind. émigré and émigrés are pronounced identically (\e.mi.ɡʁe\) 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 1 extra letter(s) - “émigré” sits inside “émigrés”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 42425, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

émigré is recorded at frequency rank #21,212, classified as anadj, pronounced \e.mi.ɡʁe\. émigrés is at rank #21,213, tagged as anadj, pronounced \e.mi.ɡʁe\.

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 42425, this pair ranks #225,695 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of émigré vs émigrés

Shared letters: gimré. Private to "émigré": -. Private to "émigrés": s.

"émigré" · 6 letters · shape VCVCCV  ·  "émigrés" · 7 letters · shape VCVCCVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "émigré" and "émigrés" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are pronounced the same (\e.mi.ɡʁe\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
Frequency check: "émigré" vs "émigrés" - which ranks higher?
"émigré" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #21,212 in our French list, against #21,213 for "émigrés". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Sound matches; spelling doesn't. Use the exits below to lock the right form or check a cousin pair.

  • Full dictionary entry for "émigré" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "émigrés" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #225,695 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "émigré" and "émigrés" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "émigrés vs érigées". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #225,695 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