Which to use
“hour” and “hours” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #27,094
- “hour” frequency rank
- #31,541
- “hours” frequency rank
- 58635
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | hour | hours |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Espèce de hangar ou d’atelier destiné à travailler le bois pour le sabotage, etc. | Chevalets qui soutiennent l’arbre sur lequel travaillent des scieurs de long. |
Same sound, different letters: hour vs hours
Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 4 letters. hour runs 4 letters (CVVC) against hours's 5 (CVVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Ear matches; page differs - hour and hours
This is the hard kind. hour and hours are pronounced identically (^((h aspiré))\uʁ\) 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) - “hour” sits inside “hours”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 58635, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
hour is recorded at frequency rank #27,094, classified as anoun, pronounced ^((h aspiré))\uʁ\. hours is at rank #31,541, tagged as anoun, pronounced ^((h aspiré))\uʁ\.
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 58635, this pair ranks #107,858 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of hour vs hours
Shared letters: horu. Private to "hour": -. Private to "hours": s.
"hour" · 4 letters · shape CVVC · "hours" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "hour" and "hours" mean the same thing in a sentence?
In ordinary French text, does "hour" or "hours" show up more?
What to do next
You've separated the homophone pair "hour" / "hours". Follow the links when you need the full entry or a neighbour that trips the same ear.
- Full dictionary entry for "hour" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "hours" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #107,858 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "hour" and "hours" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "heurt vs hours". 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 #107,858 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.