Which to use
“familles” is a noun and “femelles” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #1,289
- “familles” frequency rank
- #10,325
- “femelles” frequency rank
- 11614
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | familles | femelles |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Pluriel de famille. | Pluriel de femelle. |
Where the eye mixes familles and femelles
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 6 letters in sequence. familles and femelles follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCVCCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Visual trap between familles and femelles
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: familles is \fa.mij\ while femelles is \fə.mɛl\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 11614, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
familles is recorded at frequency rank #1,289, classified as anoun, pronounced \fa.mij\. femelles is at rank #10,325, tagged as anadj, pronounced \fə.mɛl\.
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 11614, this pair ranks #408,490 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of familles vs femelles
Shared letters: eflms. Private to "familles": ai. Private to "femelles": -.
"familles" · 8 letters · shape CVCVCCVC · "femelles" · 8 letters · shape CVCVCCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Can "familles" and "femelles" be used interchangeably?
In ordinary French text, does "familles" or "femelles" show up more?
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 "familles" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "femelles" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #408,490 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "familles" and "femelles" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "faciales vs familles". 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 #408,490 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.