Which to use
“police” is a noun and “polies” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #469
- “police” frequency rank
- #43,074
- “polies” frequency rank
- 43543
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | police | polies |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Ordre, règlement établi dans un État, dans une ville, pour tout ce qui regarde la sûreté, la tranquillité et la commodité des citoyens, des habitants. | Féminin pluriel de poli. |
Where the eye mixes police and polies
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence.
Visual trap between police and polies
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: police is \pɔ.lis\ while polies is \po.li\. 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 (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 43543, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
police is recorded at frequency rank #469, classified as anoun, pronounced \pɔ.lis\. polies is at rank #43,074, tagged as anadj, pronounced \po.li\.
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 43543, this pair ranks #217,265 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of police vs polies
Shared letters: eilop. Private to "police": c. Private to "polies": s.
"police" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV · "polies" · 6 letters · shape CVCVVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Can "police" and "polies" be used interchangeably?
In ordinary French text, does "police" or "polies" show up more?
After this comparison
Eye-level mix-up between "police" and "polies" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "police" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "polies" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #217,265 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "police" and "polies" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "poilues vs polies". 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 #217,265 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.