lervslezWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: ler is a noun, lez is a preposition, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“ler” is a noun and “lez” is a preposition - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#41,868
“ler” frequency rank
#21,063
“lez” frequency rank
62931
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ler lez
Definition Pin. À côté de, proche de, tout contre.

Letter map: ler vs lez

Shared letters muted; letters that set ler and lez apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

3 ch
ler
3 ch
lez

Part-of-speech tell for ler / lez

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: ler is anoun and lezapreposition. On the page they differ by a single letter - r in “ler” becomes z in “lez”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 62931, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ler is recorded at frequency rank #41,868, classified as anoun. lez is at rank #21,063, tagged as aprep, pronounced \lɛ\.

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 62931, this pair ranks #84,492 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of ler vs lez

Shared letters: el. Private to "ler": r. Private to "lez": z.

"ler" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "lez" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "ler" for "lez" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "ler" is a noun and "lez" a preposition, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "ler" vs "lez" - which ranks higher?
"lez" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #21,063 in our French list, against #41,868 for "ler". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "ler" and "lez".

  • Full dictionary entry for "ler" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "lez" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #84,492 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ler" and "lez" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "lep vs ler". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #84,492 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