irréductible vs irréductibles

Which to use

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

#36,014
“irréductible” frequency rank: #29,829
“irréductibles” frequency rank: 65843
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	irréductible	irréductibles
Definition	Se dit d’un oxyde métallique qu’on ne peut ramener à l’état de métal.	Pluriel de irréductible.

Same sound, different letters: irréductible vs irréductibles

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 12 letters. irréductible runs 12 letters (VCCVCVCCVCCV) against irréductibles's 13 (VCCVCVCCVCCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

12 ch

irréductible

13 ch

irréductibles

Same sound, different spelling - irréductible / irréductibles

This is the hard kind. irréductible and irréductibles are pronounced identically (\i.ʁe.dyk.tibl\) 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) - “irréductible” sits inside “irréductibles”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 65843, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

irréductible is recorded at frequency rank #36,014, classified as anadj, pronounced \i.ʁe.dyk.tibl\. irréductibles is at rank #29,829, tagged as anadj, pronounced \i.ʁe.dyk.tibl\.

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 65843, this pair ranks #70,524 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of irréductible vs irréductibles

Shared letters: bcdeilrtué. Private to "irréductible": -. Private to "irréductibles": s.

"irréductible" · 12 letters · shape VCCVCVCCVCCV · "irréductibles" · 13 letters · shape VCCVCVCCVCCVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "irréductible" and "irréductibles" mean the same thing in a sentence?

No. They are pronounced the same (\i.ʁe.dyk.tibl\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.

In ordinary French text, does "irréductible" or "irréductibles" show up more?

"irréductibles" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #29,829 in our French list, against #36,014 for "irréductible". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

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

Full dictionary entry for "irréductible" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "irréductibles" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #70,524 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics

Confusion rank #70,524 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.