HolmesvshôtesWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: Holmes is a name, hôtes is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“Holmes” is a name and “hôtes” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#13,402
“Holmes” frequency rank
#8,560
“hôtes” frequency rank
21962
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Holmes hôtes
Definition Nom de famille d’origine anglaise. Pluriel de hôte.

Letter map: Holmes vs hôtes

Shared letters muted; letters that set Holmes and hôtes apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

6 ch
Holmes
5 ch
hôtes

Part-of-speech tell for Holmes / hôtes

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: Holmes is aname and hôtesanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 21962, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Holmes is recorded at frequency rank #13,402, classified as aname. hôtes is at rank #8,560, tagged as anoun, pronounced ^((h muet))\ot\.

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 21962, this pair ranks #360,515 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of Holmes vs hôtes

Shared letters: ehs. Private to "Holmes": lmo. Private to "hôtes": .

"Holmes" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC  ·  "hôtes" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Holmeshholmes · hlomes · holems · hollmes · holmess · holmmes · holmse · homles

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "Holmes" and "hôtes" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Holmes" is a name and "hôtes" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "Holmes" or "hôtes" show up more?
"hôtes" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #8,560 in our French list, against #13,402 for "Holmes". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pair "Holmes" vs "hôtes" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "Holmes" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "hôtes" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #360,515 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Holmes" and "hôtes" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "haltes vs Holmes". 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 #360,515 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