leursvslèvreWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: leurs is a determiner, lèvre is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“leurs” is a determiner and “lèvre” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#126
“leurs” frequency rank
#13,423
“lèvre” frequency rank
13549
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature leurs lèvre
Definition Troisième personne du pluriel. Qui sont à eux. Plusieurs possesseurs et plusieurs objets. Partie extérieure et charnue qui borde la bouche, qui couvre les dents et qui aide à la formation des sons, à l’articulation des mots. Note d’usage : Très souvent employé au pluriel pour comprendre la lèvre supérieure et la lèvre inférieure.

Where the eye mixes leurs and lèvre

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

5 ch
leurs
5 ch
lèvre

Look-alike desk: leurs vs lèvre

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: leurs is \lœʁ\ while lèvre is \lɛvʁ\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (determiner vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 13549, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

leurs is recorded at frequency rank #126, classified as adet, pronounced \lœʁ\. lèvre is at rank #13,423, tagged as anoun, pronounced \lɛvʁ\.

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 13549, this pair ranks #400,545 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of leurs vs lèvre

Shared letters: elr. Private to "leurs": su. Private to "lèvre": .

"leurs" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC  ·  "lèvre" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • leurselurs · lerus · leurrs · leurss · leusr · lleurs · luers

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "leurs" for "lèvre" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "leurs" is a determiner and "lèvre" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "leurs" or "lèvre" show up more?
"leurs" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #126 in our French list, against #13,423 for "lèvre". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Eye-level mix-up between "leurs" and "lèvre" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "leurs" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "lèvre" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #400,545 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "leurs" and "lèvre" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "lèvre vs Livry". 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 #400,545 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