Which to use
“impossible” and “impossibles” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #878
- “impossible” frequency rank
- #14,056
- “impossibles” frequency rank
- 14934
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | impossible | impossibles |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Qui ne peut être ; qui ne se peut faire. | Pluriel de impossible. |
Same sound, different letters: impossible vs impossibles
Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 10 letters.
Ear matches; page differs - impossible and impossibles
This is the hard kind. impossible and impossibles are pronounced identically (\ɛ̃.pɔ.sibl\) and both work as anadjective. 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) - “impossible” sits inside “impossibles”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 14934, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
impossible is recorded at frequency rank #878, classified as anadj, pronounced \ɛ̃.pɔ.sibl\. impossibles is at rank #14,056, tagged as anadj, pronounced \ɛ̃.pɔ.sibl\.
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 14934, this pair ranks #394,593 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of impossible vs impossibles
Shared letters: beilmops. Private to "impossible": -. Private to "impossibles": -.
"impossible" · 10 letters · shape VCCVCCVCCV · "impossibles" · 11 letters · shape VCCVCCVCCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
- impossible ← immpossible · imopssible · imposible · imposisble · impossbile · impossibble · impossibel · impossiblle
- impossibles ← immpossibles · imopssibles · imposibles · imposisbles · impossbiles · impossibbles · impossibels · impossibless
Frequently Asked Questions
Can "impossible" and "impossibles" be used interchangeably?
In ordinary French text, does "impossible" or "impossibles" show up more?
Useful next steps
"impossible" and "impossibles" share a sound, keep the gloss open, then jump to the headword or a nearby trap.
- Full dictionary entry for "impossible" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "impossibles" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #394,593 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "impossible" and "impossibles" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "impassible vs impossibles". 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 #394,593 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.