Which to use
“houille” and “houilles” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #30,205
- “houille” frequency rank
- #42,383
- “houilles” frequency rank
- 72588
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | houille | houilles |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Charbons fossiles appelés communément charbons de terre. | Pluriel de houille. |
Same sound, different letters: houille vs houilles
Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 7 letters. houille runs 7 letters (CVVVCCV) against houilles's 8 (CVVVCCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Ear matches; page differs - houille and houilles
This is the hard kind. houille and houilles are pronounced identically (^((h aspiré))\uj\) 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) - “houille” sits inside “houilles”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 72588, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
houille is recorded at frequency rank #30,205, classified as anoun, pronounced ^((h aspiré))\uj\. houilles is at rank #42,383, tagged as anoun, pronounced ^((h aspiré))\uj\.
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 72588, this pair ranks #43,481 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of houille vs houilles
Shared letters: ehilou. Private to "houille": -. Private to "houilles": s.
"houille" · 7 letters · shape CVVVCCV · "houilles" · 8 letters · shape CVVVCCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "houille" and "houilles" mean the same thing in a sentence?
In ordinary French text, does "houille" or "houilles" show up more?
What to do next
You've separated the homophone pair "houille" / "houilles". Follow the links when you need the full entry or a neighbour that trips the same ear.
- Full dictionary entry for "houille" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "houilles" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #43,481 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "houille" and "houilles" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "houillères vs houilles". 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 #43,481 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.