lervslyreTell them apart

Which to use

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

#41,868
“ler” frequency rank
#30,253
“lyre” frequency rank
72121
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ler lyre
Definition Pin. Cordophone portable à cordes pincées parallèles au chevalet, dont la caisse de résonance ne se prolonge pas par un manche, qui était en usage chez les anciens.

Letter map: ler vs lyre

Shared letters muted; letters that set ler and lyre apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. ler runs 3 letters (CVC) against lyre's 4 (CVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

3 ch
ler
4 ch
lyre

Pair insight - ler / lyre

ler and lyre 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 72121, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ler is recorded at frequency rank #41,868, classified as anoun. lyre is at rank #30,253, tagged as anoun, pronounced \liʁ\.

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 72121, this pair ranks #45,120 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of ler vs lyre

Shared letters: elr. Private to "ler": -. Private to "lyre": y.

"ler" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "lyre" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • lyre ← llyre · lrye · lyer · lyrre · lyyre · ylre

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "ler" for "lyre" 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 "lyre"?
"lyre" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #30,253 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.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "ler" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "lyre" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #45,120 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ler" and "lyre" 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 #45,120 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