Which to use
“portail” and “portails” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #5,275
- “portail” frequency rank
- #25,770
- “portails” frequency rank
- 31045
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | portail | portails |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Grande porte. | Pluriel de portail. |
Same sound, different letters: portail vs portails
Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 7 letters. portail runs 7 letters (CVCCVVC) against portails's 8 (CVCCVVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Ear matches; page differs - portail and portails
This is the hard kind. portail and portails are pronounced identically (\pɔʁ.taj\) 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) - “portail” sits inside “portails”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 31045, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
portail is recorded at frequency rank #5,275, classified as anoun, pronounced \pɔʁ.taj\. portails is at rank #25,770, tagged as anoun, pronounced \pɔʁ.taj\.
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 31045, this pair ranks #306,341 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of portail vs portails
Shared letters: ailoprt. Private to "portail": -. Private to "portails": s.
"portail" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVVC · "portails" · 8 letters · shape CVCCVVCC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "portail" and "portails" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Which is more common, "portail" or "portails"?
After this comparison
"portail" and "portails" share a sound, keep the gloss open, then jump to the headword or a nearby trap.
- Full dictionary entry for "portail" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "portails" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #306,341 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "portail" and "portails" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "portails vs Portal". 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 #306,341 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.