habillentvshabillesTell them apart

Which to use

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

#29,376
“habillent” frequency rank
#42,917
“habilles” frequency rank
72293
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature habillent habilles
Definition Troisième personne du pluriel du présent de l’indicatif de habiller. Deuxième personne du singulier du présent de l’indicatif de habiller.

Same sound, different letters: habillent vs habilles

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 7 letters. habillent runs 9 letters (CVCVCCVCC) against habilles's 8 (CVCVCCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

9 ch
habillent
8 ch
habilles

Homophone desk: habillent vs habilles

This is the hard kind. habillent and habilles are pronounced identically (\a.bij\) and both work as averb. 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 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 72293, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

habillent is recorded at frequency rank #29,376, classified as averb, pronounced \a.bij\. habilles is at rank #42,917, tagged as averb, pronounced \a.bij\.

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 72293, this pair ranks #44,499 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of habillent vs habilles

Shared letters: abehil. Private to "habillent": nt. Private to "habilles": s.

"habillent" · 9 letters · shape CVCVCCVCC  ·  "habilles" · 8 letters · shape CVCVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • habillentahbillent · habbillent · habilelnt · habilent · habillennt · habillentt · habilletn · habillnet
  • habillesahbilles · habbilles · habilels · habilless · habillse · habliles · haiblles · hbailles

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "habillent" and "habilles" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are pronounced the same (\a.bij\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
In ordinary French text, does "habillent" or "habilles" show up more?
"habillent" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #29,376 in our French list, against #42,917 for "habilles". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "habillent" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "habilles" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #44,499 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "habillent" and "habilles" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "habilles vs habillez". 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 #44,499 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