Which to use
“muscle” and “muscles” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #9,201
- “muscle” frequency rank
- #6,321
- “muscles” frequency rank
- 15522
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | muscle | muscles |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Organe contractile assurant le mouvement, chez les animaux, dont l’être humain. | Pluriel de muscle. |
Same sound, different letters: muscle vs muscles
Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 6 letters. muscle runs 6 letters (CVCCCV) against muscles's 7 (CVCCCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Ear matches; page differs - muscle and muscles
This is the hard kind. muscle and muscles are pronounced identically (\myskl\) 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) - “muscle” sits inside “muscles”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 15522, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
muscle is recorded at frequency rank #9,201, classified as anoun, pronounced \myskl\. muscles is at rank #6,321, tagged as anoun, pronounced \myskl\.
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 15522, this pair ranks #391,980 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of muscle vs muscles
Shared letters: celmsu. Private to "muscle": -. Private to "muscles": -.
"muscle" · 6 letters · shape CVCCCV · "muscles" · 7 letters · shape CVCCCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "muscle" and "muscles" mean the same thing in a sentence?
In ordinary French text, does "muscle" or "muscles" show up more?
After this comparison
"muscle" and "muscles" share a sound, keep the gloss open, then jump to the headword or a nearby trap.
- Full dictionary entry for "muscle" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "muscles" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #391,980 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "muscle" and "muscles" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "muscat vs muscle". 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 #391,980 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.