excessivevsexcessivesTell them apart

Which to use

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

#10,152
“excessive” frequency rank
#26,725
“excessives” frequency rank
36877
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature excessive excessives
Definition Féminin singulier de excessif. Féminin pluriel de excessif.

Same sound, different letters: excessive vs excessives

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 9 letters. excessive runs 9 letters (VCCVCCVCV) against excessives's 10 (VCCVCCVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

9 ch
excessive
10 ch
excessives

Ear matches; page differs - excessive and excessives

This is the hard kind. excessive and excessives are pronounced identically (\ɛk.se.siv\) 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) - “excessive” sits inside “excessives”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 36877, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

excessive is recorded at frequency rank #10,152, classified as anadj, pronounced \ɛk.se.siv\. excessives is at rank #26,725, tagged as anadj, pronounced \ɛk.se.siv\.

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 36877, this pair ranks #266,497 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of excessive vs excessives

Shared letters: ceisvx. Private to "excessive": -. Private to "excessives": -.

"excessive" · 9 letters · shape VCCVCCVCV  ·  "excessives" · 10 letters · shape VCCVCCVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • excessive ← ecxessive · exccessive · excesisve · excesive · excessiev · excessivve · excessvie · excsesive
  • excessives ← ecxessives · exccessives · excesisves · excesives · excessievs · excessivess · excessivse · excessivves

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "excessive" and "excessives" be used interchangeably?
No. They are pronounced the same (\ɛk.se.siv\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
Frequency check: "excessive" vs "excessives" - which ranks higher?
"excessive" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #10,152 in our French list, against #26,725 for "excessives". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "excessive" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "excessives" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #266,497 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "excessive" and "excessives" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "excessifs vs excessives". 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 #266,497 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