Which to use
“payable” and “payables” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #39,449
- “payable” frequency rank
- #46,341
- “payables” frequency rank
- 85790
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | payable | payables |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Qui doit être payé à certains termes ou à certaines personnes. | Pluriel de payable. |
Same sound, different letters: payable vs payables
Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 7 letters.
Ear matches; page differs - payable and payables
This is the hard kind. payable and payables are pronounced identically (\pɛ.jabl\) 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) - “payable” sits inside “payables”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 85790, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
payable is recorded at frequency rank #39,449, classified as anadj, pronounced \pɛ.jabl\. payables is at rank #46,341, tagged as anadj, pronounced \pɛ.jabl\.
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 85790, this pair ranks #10,747 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of payable vs payables
Shared letters: abelpy. Private to "payable": -. Private to "payables": s.
"payable" · 7 letters · shape CVVVCCV · "payables" · 8 letters · shape CVVVCCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "payable" and "payables" mean the same thing in a sentence?
In ordinary French text, does "payable" or "payables" show up more?
Useful next steps
You've separated the homophone pair "payable" / "payables". Follow the links when you need the full entry or a neighbour that trips the same ear.
- Full dictionary entry for "payable" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "payables" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #10,747 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "payable" and "payables" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "paraboles vs payables". 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 #10,747 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.