passiblevspassiblesWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#17,506
“passible” frequency rank
#34,662
“passibles” frequency rank
52168
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature passible passibles
Definition Qui peut subir, qui a mérité de subir une peine. Pluriel de passible.

Same sound, different letters: passible vs passibles

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 8 letters. passible runs 8 letters (CVCCVCCV) against passibles's 9 (CVCCVCCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

8 ch
passible
9 ch
passibles

Ear matches; page differs - passible and passibles

This is the hard kind. passible and passibles are pronounced identically (\pa.sibl\) and both work as anadjective. 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) - “passible” sits inside “passibles”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 52168, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

passible is recorded at frequency rank #17,506, classified as anadj, pronounced \pa.sibl\. passibles is at rank #34,662, tagged as anadj, pronounced \pa.sibl\.

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 52168, this pair ranks #149,652 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of passible vs passibles

Shared letters: abeilps. Private to "passible": -. Private to "passibles": -.

"passible" · 8 letters · shape CVCCVCCV  ·  "passibles" · 9 letters · shape CVCCVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • passible ← apssible · pasible · pasisble · passbile · passibble · passibel · passiblle · passilbe
  • passibles ← apssibles · pasibles · pasisbles · passbiles · passibbles · passibels · passibless · passiblles

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "passible" and "passibles" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are pronounced the same (\pa.sibl\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
Frequency check: "passible" vs "passibles" - which ranks higher?
"passible" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #17,506 in our French list, against #34,662 for "passibles". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've separated the homophone pair "passible" / "passibles". Follow the links when you need the full entry or a neighbour that trips the same ear.

  • Full dictionary entry for "passible" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "passibles" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #149,652 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "passible" and "passibles" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "passibles vs plausibles". 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 #149,652 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