lierrevslièvreTell them apart

Which to use

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

#32,047
“lierre” frequency rank
#18,525
“lièvre” frequency rank
50572
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature lierre lièvre
Definition Nom usuel des représentants du genre Hedera, plantes sempervirentes, qui rampent à terre ou qui grimpent le long des murailles et autour des arbres et dont le type est le lierre grimpant ou Hedera helix. Quadrupède mammifère, à longues oreilles, de la famille des léporidés, qui a les pattes de derrière plus longues que celles de devant, ce qui le rend très rapide à la course.

Where the eye mixes lierre and lièvre

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. lierre and lièvre follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVVCCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

6 ch
lierre
6 ch
lièvre

Look-alike desk: lierre vs lièvre

A purely visual mix-up. lierre (\ljɛʁ\) and lièvre (\ljɛvʁ\) 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 50572, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

lierre is recorded at frequency rank #32,047, classified as anoun, pronounced \ljɛʁ\. lièvre is at rank #18,525, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ljɛvʁ\.

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 50572, this pair ranks #161,607 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of lierre vs lièvre

Shared letters: eilr. Private to "lierre": -. Private to "lièvre": vè.

"lierre" · 6 letters · shape CVVCCV  ·  "lièvre" · 6 letters · shape CVVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • lierre ← ilerre · leirre · liere · lierer · lirere · llierre

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "lierre" for "lièvre" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\ljɛʁ\ versus \ljɛvʁ\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "lierre" vs "lièvre" - which ranks higher?
"lièvre" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #18,525 in our French list, against #32,047 for "lierre". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "lierre" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "lièvre" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #161,607 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "lierre" and "lièvre" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "lierre vs Littré". 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 #161,607 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