LairvslavoirConfusable pair

Quick tell: Lair is a name, lavoir is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“Lair” is a name and “lavoir” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#36,923
“Lair” frequency rank
#30,246
“lavoir” frequency rank
67169
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Lair lavoir
Definition Nom de famille. Bassin public alimenté en eau aménagé pour rincer le linge.

Letter map: Lair vs lavoir

Shared letters muted; letters that set Lair and lavoir apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. Lair runs 4 letters (CVVC) against lavoir's 6 (CVCVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
Lair
6 ch
lavoir

Part-of-speech tell for Lair / lavoir

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: Lair is aname and lavoiranoun. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 67169, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Lair is recorded at frequency rank #36,923, classified as aname. lavoir is at rank #30,246, tagged as anoun, pronounced \la.vwaʁ\.

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 67169, this pair ranks #64,587 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of Lair vs lavoir

Shared letters: ailr. Private to "Lair": -. Private to "lavoir": ov.

"Lair" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "lavoir" · 6 letters · shape CVCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Lairalir · lairr · lari · llair
  • lavoiralvoir · laovir · lavior · lavoirr · lavori · lavvoir · llavoir · lvaoir

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "Lair" and "lavoir" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Lair" is a name and "lavoir" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "Lair" or "lavoir"?
"lavoir" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #30,246 in our French list, against #36,923 for "Lair". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

You've compared "Lair" and "lavoir". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "Lair" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "lavoir" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #64,587 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Lair" and "lavoir" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "lago vs Lair". 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 #64,587 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