plaquéevsplaquesWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: plaquée is a adjective, plaques is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“plaquée” is an adjective and “plaques” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#43,069
“plaquée” frequency rank
#5,169
“plaques” frequency rank
48238
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature plaquée plaques
Definition Féminin singulier de plaqué. Pluriel de plaque.

Where the eye mixes plaquée and plaques

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 6 letters in sequence. plaquée (CCVCVVV) and plaques (CCVCVVC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

7 ch
plaquée
7 ch
plaques

Look-alike desk: plaquée vs plaques

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: plaquée is \pla.ke\ while plaques is \plak\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 48238, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

plaquée is recorded at frequency rank #43,069, classified as anadj, pronounced \pla.ke\. plaques is at rank #5,169, tagged as anoun, pronounced \plak\.

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 48238, this pair ranks #180,536 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of plaquée vs plaques

Shared letters: aelpqu. Private to "plaquée": é. Private to "plaques": s.

"plaquée" · 7 letters · shape CCVCVVV  ·  "plaques" · 7 letters · shape CCVCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • plaques ← lpaques · palques · plaqeus · plaqques · plaquess · plaquse · plauqes · pllaques

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "plaquée" and "plaques" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "plaquée" is an adjective and "plaques" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "plaquée" or "plaques" show up more?
"plaques" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #5,169 in our French list, against #43,069 for "plaquée". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "plaquée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "plaques" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #180,536 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "plaquée" and "plaques" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "planqués vs plaquée". 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 #180,536 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