muraillevsmuraillesWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#16,421
“muraille” frequency rank
#20,506
“murailles” frequency rank
36927
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature muraille murailles
Definition Ensemble de murs clôturant un espace. Pluriel de muraille.

Same sound, different letters: muraille vs murailles

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 8 letters. muraille runs 8 letters (CVCVVCCV) against murailles's 9 (CVCVVCCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

8 ch
muraille
9 ch
murailles

Ear matches; page differs - muraille and murailles

This is the hard kind. muraille and murailles are pronounced identically (\my.ʁaj\) and both work as anoun. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “muraille” sits inside “murailles”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 36927, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

muraille is recorded at frequency rank #16,421, classified as anoun, pronounced \my.ʁaj\. murailles is at rank #20,506, tagged as anoun, pronounced \my.ʁaj\.

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 36927, this pair ranks #266,142 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of muraille vs murailles

Shared letters: aeilmru. Private to "muraille": -. Private to "murailles": s.

"muraille" · 8 letters · shape CVCVVCCV  ·  "murailles" · 9 letters · shape CVCVVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • muraillemmuraille · mruaille · muarille · muraile · murailel · muralile · murialle · murraille
  • muraillesmmurailles · mruailles · muarilles · murailels · murailes · murailless · muraillse · muraliles

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "muraille" and "murailles" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are pronounced the same (\my.ʁaj\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
Frequency check: "muraille" vs "murailles" - which ranks higher?
"muraille" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #16,421 in our French list, against #20,506 for "murailles". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "muraille" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "murailles" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #266,142 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "muraille" and "murailles" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "murailles vs myrtilles". 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 #266,142 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