rayésvsreyesWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#43,107
“rayés” frequency rank
#29,120
“reyes” frequency rank
72227
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature rayés reyes
Definition Masculin pluriel de rayé. Pluriel de rey.

Where the eye mixes rayés and reyes

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. rayés and reyes follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVVVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

5 ch
rayés
5 ch
reyes

Visual trap between rayés and reyes

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: rayés is \ʁɛ.je\ while reyes is \ˈɾe.ʝes\. 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 72227, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

rayés is recorded at frequency rank #43,107, classified as anadj, pronounced \ʁɛ.je\. reyes is at rank #29,120, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ˈɾe.ʝes\.

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 72227, this pair ranks #44,741 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of rayés vs reyes

Shared letters: rsy. Private to "rayés": aé. Private to "reyes": e.

"rayés" · 5 letters · shape CVVVC  ·  "reyes" · 5 letters · shape CVVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • reyes ← eryes · reeys · reyess · reyse · reyyes · rreyes · ryees

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "rayés" for "reyes" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "rayés" is an adjective and "reyes" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "rayés" or "reyes" show up more?
"reyes" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #29,120 in our French list, against #43,107 for "rayés". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "rayés" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "reyes" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #44,741 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "rayés" and "reyes" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "rayés vs Rhys". 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 #44,741 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