orquevsorquesTell them apart

Which to use

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

#46,932
“orque” frequency rank
#32,943
“orques” frequency rank
79875
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature orque orques
Definition Espèce de grand cétacé à dents à livrée noire et blanche et à nageoire dorsale très haute. Pluriel de orque.

Same sound, different letters: orque vs orques

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 5 letters.

5 ch
orque
6 ch
orques

Homophone desk: orque vs orques

This is the hard kind. orque and orques are pronounced identically (\ɔʁk\) 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) - “orque” sits inside “orques”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 79875, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

orque is recorded at frequency rank #46,932, classified as anoun, pronounced \ɔʁk\. orques is at rank #32,943, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ɔʁk\.

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 79875, this pair ranks #22,266 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of orque vs orques

Shared letters: eoqru. Private to "orque": -. Private to "orques": s.

"orque" · 5 letters · shape VCCVV  ·  "orques" · 6 letters · shape VCCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • orqueoqrue · orqeu · orqque · orrque · oruqe
  • orquesoqrues · orqeus · orqques · orquess · orquse · orrques · oruqes

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "orque" and "orques" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are pronounced the same (\ɔʁk\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
Frequency check: "orque" vs "orques" - which ranks higher?
"orques" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #32,943 in our French list, against #46,932 for "orque". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

"orque" and "orques" share a sound, keep the gloss open, then jump to the headword or a nearby trap.

  • Full dictionary entry for "orque" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "orques" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #22,266 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "orque" and "orques" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "orme vs orque". 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 #22,266 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