muraillesvsmuralesConfusable pair

Which to use

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

#20,506
“murailles” frequency rank
#23,618
“murales” frequency rank
44124
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature murailles murales
Definition Pluriel de muraille. Pluriel de murale.

Where the eye mixes murailles and murales

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 7 letters in sequence. murailles runs 9 letters (CVCVVCCVC) against murales's 7 (CVCVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

9 ch
murailles
7 ch
murales

Look-alike desk: murailles vs murales

A purely visual mix-up. murailles (\my.ʁaj\) and murales (\my.ʁal\) 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 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 44124, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

murailles is recorded at frequency rank #20,506, classified as anoun, pronounced \my.ʁaj\. murales is at rank #23,618, tagged as anoun, pronounced \my.ʁal\.

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 44124, this pair ranks #212,869 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of murailles vs murales

Shared letters: aelmrsu. Private to "murailles": i. Private to "murales": -.

"murailles" · 9 letters · shape CVCVVCCVC  ·  "murales" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • muraillesmmurailles · mruailles · muarilles · murailels · murailes · murailless · muraillse · muraliles
  • muralesmmurales · mruales · muarles · muraels · muraless · muralles · muralse · murlaes

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "murailles" and "murales" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (\my.ʁaj\ versus \my.ʁal\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary French text, does "murailles" or "murales" show up more?
"murailles" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #20,506 in our French list, against #23,618 for "murales". 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 "murailles" and "murales" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "murailles" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "murales" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #212,869 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "murailles" and "murales" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "mirages vs murales". 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 #212,869 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