illuminéevsilluminésWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: illuminée is a noun, illuminés is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“illuminée” is a noun and “illuminés” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#41,337
“illuminée” frequency rank
#31,545
“illuminés” frequency rank
72882
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature illuminée illuminés
Definition Femme illuminée. Masculin pluriel de illuminé.

Same sound, different letters: illuminée vs illuminés

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 8 letters.

9 ch
illuminée
9 ch
illuminés

Same sound, different spelling - illuminée / illuminés

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: illuminée and illuminés carry the same recorded pronunciation, \i.ly.mi.ne\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is anoun, the other anadjective, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They differ by a single letter - e in “illuminée” becomes s in “illuminés”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 72882, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

illuminée is recorded at frequency rank #41,337, classified as anoun, pronounced \i.ly.mi.ne\. illuminés is at rank #31,545, tagged as anadj, pronounced \i.ly.mi.ne\.

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 72882, this pair ranks #42,431 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of illuminée vs illuminés

Shared letters: ilmnué. Private to "illuminée": e. Private to "illuminés": s.

"illuminée" · 9 letters · shape VCCVCVCVV  ·  "illuminés" · 9 letters · shape VCCVCVCVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "illuminée" and "illuminés" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "illuminée" is a noun and "illuminés" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "illuminée" or "illuminés"?
"illuminés" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #31,545 in our French list, against #41,337 for "illuminée". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

You've separated the homophone pair "illuminée" / "illuminés". Follow the links when you need the full entry or a neighbour that trips the same ear.

  • Full dictionary entry for "illuminée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "illuminés" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #42,431 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "illuminée" and "illuminés" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "illuminée vs illuminent". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #42,431 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