libervsliresTell them apart

Which to use

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

#29,419
“liber” frequency rank
#35,129
“lires” frequency rank
64548
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature liber lires
Definition Tissu végétal secondaire produit par le cambium des tiges et des racines, conducteur de la sève élaborée. Pluriel de lire.

Where the eye mixes liber and lires

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. liber and lires follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

5 ch
liber
5 ch
lires

Visual trap between liber and lires

A purely visual mix-up. liber (\li.bɛʁ\) and lires (\liʁ\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 64548, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

liber is recorded at frequency rank #29,419, classified as anoun, pronounced \li.bɛʁ\. lires is at rank #35,129, 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 64548, this pair ranks #76,533 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of liber vs lires

Shared letters: eilr. Private to "liber": b. Private to "lires": s.

"liber" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "lires" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • liber ← ilber · lbier · libber · liberr · liebr · lliber
  • lires ← ilres · liers · liress · lirres · lirse · llires · lries

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "liber" for "lires" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\li.bɛʁ\ versus \liʁ\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "liber" or "lires"?
"liber" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #29,419 in our French list, against #35,129 for "lires". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "liber" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "lires" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #76,533 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "liber" and "lires" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "liker vs lires". 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 #76,533 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