quatrièmevsquatrièmesTell them apart

Which to use

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

#1,751
“quatrième” frequency rank
#49,304
“quatrièmes” frequency rank
51055
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature quatrième quatrièmes
Definition Adjectif ordinal correspondant au nombre quatre. Pluriel de quatrième.

Same sound, different letters: quatrième vs quatrièmes

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 9 letters. quatrième runs 9 letters (CVVCCVVCV) against quatrièmes's 10 (CVVCCVVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

9 ch
quatrième
10 ch
quatrièmes

Homophone desk: quatrième vs quatrièmes

This is the hard kind. quatrième and quatrièmes are pronounced identically (\ka.tʁi.jɛm\) 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) - “quatrième” sits inside “quatrièmes”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 51055, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

quatrième is recorded at frequency rank #1,751, classified as anadj, pronounced \ka.tʁi.jɛm\. quatrièmes is at rank #49,304, tagged as anadj, pronounced \ka.tʁi.jɛm\.

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 51055, this pair ranks #157,932 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of quatrième vs quatrièmes

Shared letters: aeimqrtuè. Private to "quatrième": -. Private to "quatrièmes": s.

"quatrième" · 9 letters · shape CVVCCVVCV  ·  "quatrièmes" · 10 letters · shape CVVCCVVCVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "quatrième" and "quatrièmes" be used interchangeably?
No. They are pronounced the same (\ka.tʁi.jɛm\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
Frequency check: "quatrième" vs "quatrièmes" - which ranks higher?
"quatrième" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,751 in our French list, against #49,304 for "quatrièmes". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

"quatrième" and "quatrièmes" share a sound, keep the gloss open, then jump to the headword or a nearby trap.

  • Full dictionary entry for "quatrième" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "quatrièmes" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #157,932 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "quatrième" and "quatrièmes" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "4e vs quatrièmes". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #157,932 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