panicvspaniquesTell them apart

Which to use

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

#47,494
“panic” frequency rank
#46,940
“paniques” frequency rank
94434
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature panic paniques
Definition Non usuel de Echinochloa crus-galli, plante herbacée, cespiteuse, annuelle , de la famille des Poacées (graminées), parfois cultivée comme céréale ou comme plante fourragère. Pluriel de panique.

Same sound, different letters: panic vs paniques

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 4 letters. panic runs 5 letters (CVCVC) against paniques's 8 (CVCVCVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
panic
8 ch
paniques

Ear matches; page differs - panic and paniques

This is the hard kind. panic and paniques are pronounced identically (\pa.nik\) 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 3 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 94434, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

panic is recorded at frequency rank #47,494, classified as anoun, pronounced \pa.nik\. paniques is at rank #46,940, tagged as anoun, pronounced \pa.nik\.

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 94434, this pair ranks #1,623 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of panic vs paniques

Shared letters: ainp. Private to "panic": c. Private to "paniques": eqsu.

"panic" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "paniques" · 8 letters · shape CVCVCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • panic ← apnic · painc · panci · panicc · pannic · pnaic · ppanic
  • paniques ← apniques · painques · paniqeus · paniqques · paniquess · paniquse · paniuqes · panniques

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "panic" and "paniques" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are pronounced the same (\pa.nik\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
In ordinary French text, does "panic" or "paniques" show up more?
"paniques" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #46,940 in our French list, against #47,494 for "panic". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "panic" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "paniques" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,623 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "panic" and "paniques" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "palin vs panic". 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 #1,623 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