lervslienWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#41,868
“ler” frequency rank
#656
“lien” frequency rank
42524
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ler lien
Definition Pin. Ce qui sert à lier, à attacher des objets ou des parties ensemble.

Letter map: ler vs lien

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

3 ch
ler
4 ch
lien

Pair insight - ler / lien

ler and lien are indexed as a confusable French pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 42524, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ler is recorded at frequency rank #41,868, classified as anoun. lien is at rank #656, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ljɛ̃\.

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 42524, this pair ranks #224,967 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of ler vs lien

Shared letters: el. Private to "ler": r. Private to "lien": in.

"ler" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "lien" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • lienilen · lein · lienn · llien

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "ler" for "lien" ever safe?
No. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
Which is more common, "ler" or "lien"?
"lien" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #656 in our French list, against #41,868 for "ler". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

You've compared "ler" and "lien". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "ler" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "lien" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #224,967 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ler" and "lien" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "lep vs ler". 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 #224,967 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