peinturevspeinturesConfusable pair

Which to use

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

#2,049
“peinture” frequency rank
#6,327
“peintures” frequency rank
8376
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature peinture peintures
Definition Substance pigmentée appliquée en couche à l’aide d’un pinceau, d’un rouleau ou par projection sur une surface à colorer ou à protéger. Pluriel de peinture.

Same sound, different letters: peinture vs peintures

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

8 ch
peinture
9 ch
peintures

Ear matches; page differs - peinture and peintures

This is the hard kind. peinture and peintures are pronounced identically (\pɛ̃.tyʁ\) 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) - “peinture” sits inside “peintures”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 8376, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

peinture is recorded at frequency rank #2,049, classified as anoun, pronounced \pɛ̃.tyʁ\. peintures is at rank #6,327, tagged as anoun, pronounced \pɛ̃.tyʁ\.

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 8376, this pair ranks #420,249 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of peinture vs peintures

Shared letters: einprtu. Private to "peinture": -. Private to "peintures": s.

"peinture" · 8 letters · shape CVVCCVCV  ·  "peintures" · 9 letters · shape CVVCCVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • peinture ← epinture · peinnture · peintrue · peintture · peintuer · peinturre · peinutre · peitnure
  • peintures ← epintures · peinntures · peintrues · peinttures · peintuers · peinturess · peinturres · peinturse

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "peinture" and "peintures" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are pronounced the same (\pɛ̃.tyʁ\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
Frequency check: "peinture" vs "peintures" - which ranks higher?
"peinture" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,049 in our French list, against #6,327 for "peintures". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Sound matches; spelling doesn't. Use the exits below to lock the right form or check a cousin pair.

  • Full dictionary entry for "peinture" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "peintures" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #420,249 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "peinture" and "peintures" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "peintures vs pointures". 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 #420,249 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