palacesvsplaceWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#49,262
“palaces” frequency rank
#178
“place” frequency rank
49440
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature palaces place
Definition Pluriel de palace. Lieu, endroit, espace qu’occupe ou que peut occuper une personne, une chose.

Where the eye mixes palaces and place

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. palaces runs 7 letters (CVCVCVC) against place's 5 (CCVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

7 ch
palaces
5 ch
place

Look-alike desk: palaces vs place

A purely visual mix-up. palaces (\pa.las\) and place (\plas\) 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 49440, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

palaces is recorded at frequency rank #49,262, classified as anoun, pronounced \pa.las\. place is at rank #178, tagged as anoun, pronounced \plas\.

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 49440, this pair ranks #170,657 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of palaces vs place

Shared letters: acelp. Private to "palaces": s. Private to "place": -.

"palaces" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCVC  ·  "place" · 5 letters · shape CCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • palaces ← aplaces · paalces · palacces · palacess · palacse · palaecs · palcaes · pallaces
  • place ← lpace · palce · placce · plaec · plcae · pllace · pplace

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "palaces" for "place" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\pa.las\ versus \plas\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "palaces" or "place"?
"place" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #178 in our French list, against #49,262 for "palaces". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "palaces" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "place" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #170,657 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "palaces" and "place" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "paces vs palaces". 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 #170,657 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