roquesvsruesTell them apart

Which to use

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

#48,771
“roques” frequency rank
#2,056
“rues” frequency rank
50827
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature roques rues
Definition Pluriel de roque. Pluriel de rue (voie).

Where the eye mixes roques and rues

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.

6 ch
roques
4 ch
rues

Why the eye confuses roques with rues

A purely visual mix-up. roques (\ʁɔk\) and rues (\ʁy\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 50827, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

roques is recorded at frequency rank #48,771, classified as anoun, pronounced \ʁɔk\. rues is at rank #2,056, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ʁy\.

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 50827, this pair ranks #159,638 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of roques vs rues

Shared letters: ersu. Private to "roques": oq. Private to "rues": -.

"roques" · 6 letters · shape CVCVVC  ·  "rues" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • roquesroqeus · roqques · roquess · roquse · rouqes · rqoues · rroques
  • ruesrrues · ruess · ures

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "roques" and "rues" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (\ʁɔk\ versus \ʁy\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary French text, does "roques" or "rues" show up more?
"rues" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,056 in our French list, against #48,771 for "roques". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Eye-level mix-up between "roques" and "rues" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "roques" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "rues" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #159,638 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "roques" and "rues" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "roques vs rouet". 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 #159,638 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