Which to use
“legal” and “légales” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #24,656
- “legal” frequency rank
- #8,265
- “légales” frequency rank
- 32921
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | legal | légales |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Légal, légale : conforme à la loi. | Féminin pluriel de légal. |
Same sound, different letters: legal vs légales
Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 4 letters. legal runs 5 letters (CVCVC) against légales's 7 (CVCVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Same sound, different spelling - legal / légales
This is the hard kind. legal and légales 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 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 32921, 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\. légales is at rank #8,265, 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 32921, this pair ranks #294,082 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of legal vs légales
Shared letters: aegl. Private to "legal": -. Private to "légales": sé.
"legal" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC · "légales" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
- legal ← elgal · leagl · legall · leggal · legla · lgeal · llegal
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "legal" and "légales" mean the same thing in a sentence?
In ordinary French text, does "legal" or "légales" show up more?
Useful next steps
You've separated the homophone pair "legal" / "légales". 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 "légales" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #294,082 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "legal" and "légales" 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 #294,082 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.