guerravsguerresTell them apart

Quick tell: guerra is a verb, guerres is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“guerra” is a verb and “guerres” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#42,371
“guerra” frequency rank
#3,615
“guerres” frequency rank
45986
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature guerra guerres
Definition Troisième personne du singulier du passé simple de guerrer. Pluriel de guerre.

Where the eye mixes guerra and guerres

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. guerra runs 6 letters (CVVCCV) against guerres's 7 (CVVCCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
guerra
7 ch
guerres

Visual trap between guerra and guerres

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: guerra is \ɡɛ.ʁa\ while guerres is \ɡɛʁ\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 45986, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

guerra is recorded at frequency rank #42,371, classified as averb, pronounced \ɡɛ.ʁa\. guerres is at rank #3,615, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ɡɛʁ\.

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 45986, this pair ranks #198,536 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of guerra vs guerres

Shared letters: egru. Private to "guerra": a. Private to "guerres": s.

"guerra" · 6 letters · shape CVVCCV  ·  "guerres" · 7 letters · shape CVVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • guerrageurra · gguerra · guera · guerar · gurera · ugerra
  • guerresgeurres · gguerres · guerers · gueres · guerress · guerrse · gureres · ugerres

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "guerra" and "guerres" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "guerra" is a verb and "guerres" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "guerra" or "guerres" show up more?
"guerres" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,615 in our French list, against #42,371 for "guerra". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "guerra" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "guerres" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #198,536 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "guerra" and "guerres" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "guéret vs guerra". 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 #198,536 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