Which to use
“relique” and “reliques” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #24,358
- “relique” frequency rank
- #13,897
- “reliques” frequency rank
- 38255
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | relique | reliques |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Ce qui reste d’un saint, d’un martyr, voire de Jésus-Christ lui-même, après sa mort. | Pluriel de relique. |
Same sound, different letters: relique vs reliques
Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 7 letters. relique runs 7 letters (CVCVCVV) against reliques's 8 (CVCVCVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Ear matches; page differs - relique and reliques
This is the hard kind. relique and reliques are pronounced identically (\ʁə.lik\) 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) - “relique” sits inside “reliques”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 38255, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
relique is recorded at frequency rank #24,358, classified as anoun, pronounced \ʁə.lik\. reliques is at rank #13,897, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ʁə.lik\.
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 38255, this pair ranks #256,568 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of relique vs reliques
Shared letters: eilqru. Private to "relique": -. Private to "reliques": s.
"relique" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCVV · "reliques" · 8 letters · shape CVCVCVVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "relique" and "reliques" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Which is more common, "relique" or "reliques"?
What to do next
Sound matches; spelling doesn't. Use the exits below to lock the right form or check a cousin pair.
- Full dictionary entry for "relique" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "reliques" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #256,568 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "relique" and "reliques" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "reliquat vs relique". 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 #256,568 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.