impactvsimpactsWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#1,818
“impact” frequency rank
#9,673
“impacts” frequency rank
11491
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature impact impacts
Definition Choc d’un projectile contre un corps. Pluriel de impact.

Same sound, different letters: impact vs impacts

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 6 letters.

6 ch
impact
7 ch
impacts

Same sound, different spelling - impact / impacts

This is the hard kind. impact and impacts are pronounced identically (\ɛ̃.pakt\) 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) - “impact” sits inside “impacts”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 11491, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

impact is recorded at frequency rank #1,818, classified as anoun, pronounced \ɛ̃.pakt\. impacts is at rank #9,673, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ɛ̃.pakt\.

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 11491, this pair ranks #408,944 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of impact vs impacts

Shared letters: acimpt. Private to "impact": -. Private to "impacts": s.

"impact" · 6 letters · shape VCCVCC  ·  "impacts" · 7 letters · shape VCCVCCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • impactimapct · immpact · impacct · impactt · impatc · impcat · imppact · ipmact
  • impactsimapcts · immpacts · impaccts · impacst · impactss · impactts · impatcs · impcats

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "impact" and "impacts" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are pronounced the same (\ɛ̃.pakt\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
Frequency check: "impact" vs "impacts" - which ranks higher?
"impact" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,818 in our French list, against #9,673 for "impacts". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

"impact" and "impacts" share a sound, keep the gloss open, then jump to the headword or a nearby trap.

  • Full dictionary entry for "impact" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "impacts" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #408,944 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "impact" and "impacts" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "impacts vs impairs". 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 #408,944 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