foulardvsfoulardsTell them apart

Which to use

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

#14,043
“foulard” frequency rank
#35,953
“foulards” frequency rank
49996
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature foulard foulards
Definition Étoffe de soie, de soie et coton ou de fibres artificielles, très légère et dont on fait des mouchoirs, des cravates, des fichus, des robes, etc. Pluriel de foulard.

Same sound, different letters: foulard vs foulards

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 7 letters. foulard runs 7 letters (CVVCVCC) against foulards's 8 (CVVCVCCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

7 ch
foulard
8 ch
foulards

Ear matches; page differs - foulard and foulards

This is the hard kind. foulard and foulards are pronounced identically (\fu.laʁ\) and both work as anoun. 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) - “foulard” sits inside “foulards”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 49996, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

foulard is recorded at frequency rank #14,043, classified as anoun, pronounced \fu.laʁ\. foulards is at rank #35,953, tagged as anoun, pronounced \fu.laʁ\.

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 49996, this pair ranks #166,122 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of foulard vs foulards

Shared letters: adfloru. Private to "foulard": -. Private to "foulards": s.

"foulard" · 7 letters · shape CVVCVCC  ·  "foulards" · 8 letters · shape CVVCVCCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • foulard ← ffoulard · foluard · foualrd · fouladr · foulardd · foularrd · foullard · foulrad
  • foulards ← ffoulards · foluards · foualrds · fouladrs · foulardds · foulardss · foularrds · foularsd

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "foulard" for "foulards" ever safe?
No. They are pronounced the same (\fu.laʁ\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
Frequency check: "foulard" vs "foulards" - which ranks higher?
"foulard" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #14,043 in our French list, against #35,953 for "foulards". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

You've separated the homophone pair "foulard" / "foulards". Follow the links when you need the full entry or a neighbour that trips the same ear.

  • Full dictionary entry for "foulard" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "foulards" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #166,122 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "foulard" and "foulards" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "foulards vs fuyards". 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 #166,122 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