Which to use
“legal” and “légale” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #24,656
- “legal” frequency rank
- #4,249
- “légale” frequency rank
- 28905
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | legal | légale |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Légal, légale : conforme à la loi. | Féminin singulier de légal. |
Same sound, different letters: legal vs légale
Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 4 letters. legal runs 5 letters (CVCVC) against légale's 6 (CVCVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Ear matches; page differs - legal and légale
This is the hard kind. legal and légale are pronounced identically (\leˈɡaːl\) 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 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 28905, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
legal is recorded at frequency rank #24,656, classified as anadj, pronounced \leˈɡaːl\. légale is at rank #4,249, tagged as anadj, pronounced \le.ɡal\.
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 28905, this pair ranks #319,910 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of legal vs légale
Shared letters: aegl. Private to "legal": -. Private to "légale": é.
"legal" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC · "légale" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV
Known mistypes of this pair
- legal ← elgal · leagl · legall · leggal · legla · lgeal · llegal
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "legal" for "légale" ever safe?
Which is more common, "legal" or "légale"?
What to do next
You've separated the homophone pair "legal" / "légale". Follow the links when you need the full entry or a neighbour that trips the same ear.
- Full dictionary entry for "legal" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "légale" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #319,910 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "legal" and "légale" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "legal vs Leia". 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 #319,910 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.