Which to use
“librairie” and “librairies” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #5,260
- “librairie” frequency rank
- #16,667
- “librairies” frequency rank
- 21927
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | librairie | librairies |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Commerce où l’on vend des livres. | Pluriel de librairie. |
Where the eye mixes librairie and librairies
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 9 letters in sequence.
Why the eye confuses librairie with librairies
A purely visual mix-up. librairie (\li.bʁɛ.ʁi\) and librairies (\li.bʁe.ʁi\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “librairie” sits inside “librairies”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 21927, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
librairie is recorded at frequency rank #5,260, classified as anoun, pronounced \li.bʁɛ.ʁi\. librairies is at rank #16,667, tagged as anoun, pronounced \li.bʁe.ʁi\.
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 21927, this pair ranks #360,712 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of librairie vs librairies
Shared letters: abeilr. Private to "librairie": -. Private to "librairies": s.
"librairie" · 9 letters · shape CVCCVVCVV · "librairies" · 10 letters · shape CVCCVVCVVC
Known mistypes of this pair
- librairie ← ilbrairie · lbirairie · libaririe · libbrairie · libraiire · librairei · librairrie · librariie
- librairies ← ilbrairies · lbirairies · libariries · libbrairies · libraiires · libraireis · librairiess · librairise
Frequently Asked Questions
Can "librairie" and "librairies" be used interchangeably?
In ordinary French text, does "librairie" or "librairies" show up more?
After this comparison
Eye-level mix-up between "librairie" and "librairies" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "librairie" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "librairies" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #360,712 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "librairie" and "librairies" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "libraires vs librairies". 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 #360,712 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.