meilleurevsmeilleuresWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: meilleure is a noun, meilleures is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“meilleure” is a noun and “meilleures” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#630
“meilleure” frequency rank
#1,961
“meilleures” frequency rank
2591
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature meilleure meilleures
Definition Celle qui est la mieux placée, la première ; qui est au maximum, au top. Féminin pluriel de meilleur.

Same sound, different letters: meilleure vs meilleures

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 9 letters.

9 ch
meilleure
10 ch
meilleures

Ear matches; page differs - meilleure and meilleures

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: meilleure and meilleures carry the same recorded pronunciation, \mɛ.jœʁ\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is anoun, the other anadjective, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “meilleure” sits inside “meilleures”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 2591, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

meilleure is recorded at frequency rank #630, classified as anoun, pronounced \mɛ.jœʁ\. meilleures is at rank #1,961, tagged as anadj, pronounced \mɛ.jœʁ\.

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 2591, this pair ranks #435,849 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of meilleure vs meilleures

Shared letters: eilmru. Private to "meilleure": -. Private to "meilleures": s.

"meilleure" · 9 letters · shape CVVCCVVCV  ·  "meilleures" · 10 letters · shape CVVCCVVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • meilleureemilleure · meilelure · meileure · meillerue · meilleuer · meilleurre · meilluere · melileure
  • meilleuresemilleures · meilelures · meileures · meillerues · meilleuers · meilleuress · meilleurres · meilleurse

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "meilleure" for "meilleures" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "meilleure" is a noun and "meilleures" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "meilleure" or "meilleures" show up more?
"meilleure" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #630 in our French list, against #1,961 for "meilleures". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Sound matches; spelling doesn't. Use the exits below to lock the right form or check a cousin pair.

  • Full dictionary entry for "meilleure" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "meilleures" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #435,849 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "meilleure" and "meilleures" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "meilleures vs meilleurs". 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 #435,849 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