rimervsrimesWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: rimer is a verb, rimes is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“rimer” is a verb and “rimes” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#44,694
“rimer” frequency rank
#22,075
“rimes” frequency rank
66769
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature rimer rimes
Definition Faire une rime (le sujet est une personne). Pluriel de rime.

Where the eye mixes rimer and rimes

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. rimer and rimes follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

5 ch
rimer
5 ch
rimes

Why the eye confuses rimer with rimes

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: rimer is \ʁi.me\ while rimes is \ʁim\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by a single letter - r in “rimer” becomes s in “rimes”, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 66769, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

rimer is recorded at frequency rank #44,694, classified as averb, pronounced \ʁi.me\. rimes is at rank #22,075, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ʁim\.

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 66769, this pair ranks #66,322 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of rimer vs rimes

Shared letters: eimr. Private to "rimer": -. Private to "rimes": s.

"rimer" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "rimes" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • rimer ← irmer · riemr · rimerr · rimmer · rimre · rmier · rrimer
  • rimes ← irmes · rimess · rimmes · rimse · rmies · rrimes

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "rimer" and "rimes" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "rimer" is a verb and "rimes" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "rimer" or "rimes" show up more?
"rimes" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #22,075 in our French list, against #44,694 for "rimer". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "rimer" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "rimes" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #66,322 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "rimer" and "rimes" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ramen vs rimer". 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 #66,322 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